WINTER TURNED TO A COLD, wet spring. The snow melted and the ice was gone from Central Park and the Japanese hadn’t given up, which only went to show you that even doctors can be wrong. Insofar as Cassidy and Terry went, the doctors were doing fine. They both were slowly rounding back into something like their old form. Terry was thinking about testing his tender back by returning to work and Cassidy was getting used to maneuvering with his cane. The strength in his leg was hinting at a revival but it was going to be a long, slow process. He was still living at Terry’s and the days were long and quiet. Terry had turned off the flow of female admirers who’d gotten into the habit of dropping by. It was as if he needed solitude to think but he never brought up the subject of the people who were watching him. Cassidy wondered if just possibly he’d forgotten about it, but no, that wasn’t like Terry. What was happening was more like the celebrated “Phony War,” which had occupied Europe while Hitler had rested, waited. Cassidy and Terry were both waiting out an interlude, waiting for all hell to break loose again. There was too damn much time to think, so far as Cassidy was concerned. It was almost as if Tom Dewey and Lucky Luciano had appeared to him in a crazy dream. There was no word from Harry Madrid, nothing. He thought of Luciano, back at Dannemora, listening to The Romance of Helen Trent, thinking about settling the score with Max Bauman and Terry Leary. He wondered if Lucky was growing impatient. The prospect was not a comforting one.
The failure of Harry Madrid to press him left Cassidy free to avoid facing the issue of Max and Terry. Nobody had asked him to produce information, so the dilemma remained at one remove. One thing he knew for sure: He couldn’t betray Terry. With luck, no one would force his hand. But what if he had to betray him to save him?
He watched the papers for war news, read everything, and never missed the correspondents’ reports on the radio. All in the hope of finding something which might shed any light on what could be happening to Karin in Cologne. The bombing of Germany had so far ignored Cologne, thank God. It was a fruitless search and he knew it. But he kept looking. He didn’t know when he might stumble across some ray of hope, however faint. Some news. Anything. But there was nothing and he knew that was the best he could hope for. When Cologne made the papers, it was bound to be bad news. That was the only kind of news coming out of the fatherland these days.
She was over there, that was all he knew. So he went to sleep every night thinking of her, praying that she was all right.
But when he closed his eyes, it got worse. What he’d feared most, what he’d told himself could never happen, was beginning. It felt like a dreaded disease, long in remission, now beginning to run its course. He couldn’t see her as clearly anymore. The memory of her was doing the one thing he’d known, known, it could never do. It was beginning to fade. Very slowly, but it was fading. Only he knew it. When he spoke of her to Terry, the words were no different. He loved her as much as he ever had. That wasn’t the point. He loved her but time was stealing her away. With each day the worst thing happened, kept happening. Karin was slipping away from him. Every night he faced the darkness and the fact that love’s fire was dimming at last. It wasn’t lessening, only receding. He began to realize he was no longer in love with a woman. He was in love with an abstraction called Karin. A symbol … Karin just wasn’t real anymore. He didn’t know what to do about it. Maybe there wasn’t anything he could do.
The Bataan Peninsula fell to the Japanese early in April. They took 36,000 prisoners. Cassidy figured the lucky ones had died in the fighting.
The war news was bad and both Terry and Lew had begun to grow weary and restless with their isolation. Cassidy was confronted by too many frustrations. He’d decided he’d waited long enough on Harry Madrid: What did the silence mean? Had they decided to proceed against Bauman and Terry without him? That was the worst possibility because it would deprive him of the chance to keep Terry out of it. Cassidy didn’t care what happened to Max Bauman, not in the final instance, not if what he’d been told was true. But Terry … he had to keep Terry from going down aboard Max’s ship. To complicate the issue, if he told Terry what was going on, God only knew what Terry might do … One thing was sure. Terry couldn’t find out what was going on. It would be like lighting a stick of dynamite while you were locked in a closet.
One evening Terry casually mentioned that it would be fun to throw a party announcing their return to the land of the living. Cassidy leaped on the idea. When contemplating the guest list, the name of Harry Madrid came up: Cassidy observed that Harry had certainly paid enough hospital visits to earn an invitation. Terry agreed, threw in the names of a couple other homicide dicks, including Bert Reagan, who invariably seemed to go where Harry Madrid went.
Paul Cassidy was in town for the first time since the Louis-Nova fight the previous autumn. Terry made sure Max Bauman and Bennie the Brute were there. And Max made sure that Cindy Squires got a night off from Heliotrope. Charley Drew took a night away from the Tap at the Taft to come by and play the piano. Terry arranged for several highly decorative, unattached women to join the group. Paul Cassidy brought a couple of wandering screenwriters and a publicist who’d been working on the Jane Russell campaign which had made her one of America’s most famous stars, though no one had ever seen her act. It was the triumph of tits, according to Herman Redwine, the publicity man who’d introduced the special cantilevered brassiere, designed by Miss Russell’s patron, Howard Hughes, to the waiting world. “Those tits don’t have to act,” Redwine observed with the bemused confidence of a man who has seen the future and recognized it as tits. “They just sort of have to sit there and look alert. This brassiere will do it, believe me.” His shirt was too tight but the collar was too big and he talked with a smoke in his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot. Paul Cassidy said that between Hughes and Miss Russell’s breasts Herman Redwine was not the man he’d once been.
There were thirty, maybe thirty-five people working their way through the White Horse and the Old Granddad and the ribs and all the chafing dishes full of stuff Terry had had sent over from Longchamps. Some of it was brown and tasted like chili. Some of it was yellow and tasted like lobster Newburg. It was all very festive. Cassidy tried not to think about Karin and the 36,000 guys on Bataan. Unfortunately, the first rank of alternatives—Harry Madrid, Tom Dewey, Lucky Luciano, and Max Bauman—was no great improvement.
Harry Madrid came early but immediately attached himself to Terry near the bar, putting back bourbon neat, and embarked on cop stories. Harry’s face was getting red and Terry was laughing and two more cops joined the group and Cassidy stood watching them and wondering at all the camaraderie. Harry was quite an actor.
Paul Cassidy had brought along a movie projector and the Robert Montgomery picture Here Comes Mr. Jordan, which he was getting ready to show in the master bedroom. Lew gave up watching Madrid buddying up with Terry and went with his second drink to the bedroom, where his father was threading the film. Paul winked at him, kept talking to the pretty women who had clustered around him, wondering just how big a deal he was when it came to getting you into the movies. Cassidy smiled, remembering how his late mother had always enjoyed watching her husband charming the hopeful ladies. He’d always been good at it but she’d known he was a one-woman man, producer or not. When she’d known she didn’t have much time left, she’d held her son’s hand and smiled past her pain and told him to grow up to be a man like his father and she’d know it, she’d look down and be proud of him. She told him to understand if his father ever fell in love again, because a person needed someone to share his good times and his bad times. She’d made him promise and he had, but Paul Cassidy had never fallen in love again. “I’m lucky, Lew,” he’d told him years later. “I’m in love now, see, son, I’ve always been in love with one woman and it’ll just be a while before I’m back with her. So don’t worry, kid. I’m fine.”
Now he was telling the ladies about Hollywood’s idea of a wartime crisis. MGM may have had more stars than there were in heaven but they also had an Eleanor Powell musical called I’ll Take Manila and consternation had swept the executive suites.
A pretty blonde batted her eyes and pouted: “What’s the big deal, vanilla, chocolate, or butter brickle?”
Paul looked dolefully at his son. “Manila. In the Philippines, my child. Not vanilla as in Schrafft’s. See, Eleanor Powell isn’t going to take Manila anymore. The only people likely to take Manila now are the Japs,” and the blonde laughed like Billie Burke. She didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Maybe she hadn’t heard about the war.
He told them that Gable had taken Lombard’s death very hard. He expected Gable to enlist any day now. Female eyes filled and shone moistly at the thought of a grieving Rhett Butler. Cassidy kept thinking of those poor bastards on Bataan. But Paul was doing all he could, salvaging the family honor. He was putting together another Bond Tour with a bunch of stars, Bogart and Tracy and Mary Astor and Loretta Young and a lot of others. Remember Pearl Harbor, that’s what everyone was saying.
“Sorry to hear about the leg, Lew.”
He turned around and saw a man wearing an officer’s uniform, perfectly tailored, a brown coat, and immaculately creased officer’s pinks with a wonderful break at the top of his gleaming cordovans. He was tall, thick, and filled the doorway. He was smoking a cigarette in a black holder and carrying a lowball glass. He was tight-mouthed but smiling with pale green eyes. His name was Bryce Huntoon. He’d been a Harvard fullback when Cassidy was in his last year at Deerfield. He’d tried to model his running style on Huntoon’s. Lots of stiff-arming. Cassidy hadn’t seen him more than a few times in the past five years but he made the society columns from time to time. Part-time ladies’ man, a full-time hotshot Wall Street lawyer.
“Occupational hazard, Bryce. That’s what I get from running around with a football. Glad you could come. What the hell kind of getup is that?”
“Oh, this,” Huntoon said, shaking his head of wavy hair. “I don’t like wearing this, it makes me feel like I’m fighting the war, or trying to look like someone who is, and I’m not.” He was a stuffed shirt but not a bad guy. The cigarette holder was a little much, though. “False pretenses. But I’m a soldier for the duration, officially anyway. They insist I wear this monkey suit—”
“They give you a gun?”
“Are you kidding? No, no gun. No basic training either, thank God. I’m in the army but mainly I sit at a desk doing what I do best. Shuffling papers. What I’ve always done. Contracts for war material. Right now I’m working with Mr. Bauman. Scrap metal, trucking … everybody’s got to pitch in these days.”
They walked back toward the music. The living room was crowded and smoky. Charley Drew was playing “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”
“What’s your rank, Bryce?”
“Colonel. Don’t ask me why—”
“Uniform make you lucky with the ladies?” Terry asked the question, smiling, surveying the party with satisfaction.
“Terry, old man, I’m always lucky with the ladies, hadn’t you heard?”
“Well, good luck tonight,” Terry said. He went off to greet Max Bauman, Bennie the Brute and Cindy Squires. Their coats were wet with rain.
“Why, there’s Mr. Bauman now,” Huntoon said. “Who’s that with him?”
“The gentleman who would blot out the moon, were there a moon, is known as Bennie the Brute—”
“No, no, the girl. The frail, as Terry used to say.”
Cassidy looked back. She was getting her bearings, casing the joint, looking a little uncertain, the way she had at the door of Cassidy’s hospital room.
“Cindy Squires. She works at Max’s club.”
“And? Go on.”
“Singer,” Cassidy added.
“Well, luck don’t fail me now.”
Cassidy watched him head across the sunken living room. The man had a damn fine tailor.
Cassidy had drifted past some couples who were dancing slowly near the piano and was making himself another drink when he felt Harry Madrid settle in at the bar beside him. His gray hair was plastered down and his blue suit was pulling across his broad meaty shoulders. He grinned crookedly and spoke out of the corner of his mouth, like a man confiding a dirty story. “Fancy,” he said, nodding at the room. “Can’t say old Terry doesn’t know how to live.” He pulled a cigar from his breast pocket. “Terry gave me this, one of Max’s. The Babe coulda hit a homer with one of these babies. Light me, will ya, Cassidy?”
“Light yourself, flatfoot. I don’t seem to hear much from you these days, Harry. You give me the dog-and-pony show, then it gets real quiet. Not nice, Harry.”
“What are you all of a sudden, some kinda tough guy? Tough guy with a cane?” He frowned and lit a match.
“I’ve always been a tough guy. Be careful. I might stick this cane right up your nose.” He sipped the Scotch and soda and looked into Harry’s little black eyes. It was hard to believe they were windows to the soul or any other damn thing. They were like mirrors where you saw all the bad things about yourself.
“Relax, Lew, we’re all friends here. It’s a party.”
“I’m a little itchy, Harry. Ratting on my best friend always gets under my skin. The way it strikes me now, it’s all your fault.”
“You haven’t done any ratting yet, Lew. Relax. Hell, maybe you wanna forget the whole thing, let Terry go into the shitter with Max … it’s all the same to Harry Madrid.” The match was burning his fingers and he dropped it. It smoldered on the pale carpeting.
“Pick it up, Harry.”
“Aw, for the chrissakes—”
“Pick up the fuckin’ match, Harry.” Casually he placed the point of his cane on Harry Madrid’s shoe and leaned on it a little.
“You’re being a prick, Lew—”
“The match …” He leaned a little harder.
Harry Madrid’s face got red when he bent down and dug the match from the carpet. It broke and made his fingertips black. He puffed and dropped the match into the ashtray on the bar.
“You pull this shit, Lew, you’re gonna go right off the high ledge.” He struck another match and got the cigar lit.
“Sure, sure, I’ll watch it, Harry. Terry hasn’t said a word about Max, not a word about gas stations or rationing stamps. What can I do? I can’t make him—”
Harry Madrid interrupted. “You haven’t let on to Terry about any of this?”
“Are you kidding? I tell Terry what Dewey and Luciano and you are up to, he’ll get his gun and use you guys for target practice.”
“That’s what I mean.” He nodded vigorously. “He’s a touchy sonuvabitch.”
“Touchy? You want to put him in the big house and you don’t want him to get touchy about it? You ask too much, Copper. But no, I haven’t told him. You’ll know if I do.”
“We’d have to kill him. And you’d be responsible, Sunny Jim. He shows one sign of knowing what Tom and Lucky have got planned …” He raised his eyebrows, a paradigm of injured weariness. “He’s deader than Lindbergh’s baby, get me? Mum’s the word.”
“And so cleverly put,” Cassidy said.
Harry Madrid shrugged, looking hard at the room. He was sweating. “We got other sources. You’re not the only one. This is big stuff, Lew. You’re just a little piss-poor part of it … We’re gonna get Max—”
“You’re smoking Max’s cigars, you’re drinking Terry’s liquor. What kind of guy are you?”
“Thirsty guy who appreciates a good smoke. What kind of guy are you, Lew?”
“Still tough,” Cassidy said. “Did I hurt your foot, Harry?”
“Yeah, you bastard.”
“Good. That’s good. That was the whole point.”
“You’re makin’ a mistake here, Lew. I’m your buddy’s only chance—if we nail Max, just maybe …” He shrugged. Anything was possible, maybe even saving Terry’s ass.
“Then I’d say he’s in trouble.”
“That’s as may be. Slim chance is better than none.”
“Better be,” Cassidy said. “For your sake.”
“I’ll be all right, don’t you worry about Harry Madrid. And Terry—he stays in the dark. Ignorance is bliss.”
“Don’t be out of touch for so long this time, Harry. Let me know what’s going on.” He smiled at Madrid, who looked momentarily confused. “Relax, Harry. We’re in this together, you and me and Lucky and Tom Dewey. I just got a little touchy a minute ago. Hey, let’s see a smile, it’s a party, remember?”
“You’re way outa line, Lew.” He began moving away.
“Enjoy yourself,” Cassidy said. He’d have to watch his temper. It was always lurking in its cave, occasionally rattling its chains, needing exercise. Football was a help. But there wouldn’t be any more football. He watched Harry mingling, moving through the crowd. He didn’t look like he belonged. He looked like a security man hired for the night. We got other sources. You’re not the only one. What the hell was he talking about? Somebody else close to Max Bauman? Max wasn’t close to anyone. Maybe Harry was blowing smoke, just whistling “Dixie.”
Marquardt Cookson always had to be the center of attention, which, given his size and high-pitched voice and the constant beacon from his vast, sweating, domed forehead, was inevitable anyway. That night he arrived wearing a crimson-lined opera cape, carrying a large rectangular package about four inches thick. His little friend carried the oversize rain-slick umbrella and a magnum of Dom Pérignon ’27. He surged through the crowd, grabbed Terry in a great moist hug, then made a place for himself on the big cream-colored couch. He held out his hand for the handkerchief, dabbed at his forehead, then looked down at his patent-leather dancing pumps. There was no way he could reach them. He pointed at them, handed the handkerchief to the pretty boy, who dropped to his knees and whisked the rain spots from the glossy finish. Terry placed a silver bucket of ice on the coffee table and rotated the champagne, screwing it down into the cracked ice. Cassidy moved closer, watching. Harry Madrid stood at the edge of the circle, scowling intently at the unfolding scene.
Cookson took the bottle of champagne from the bucket and quickly worked the cork up with his thumbs. It rocketed out and glanced off a long mirror with a chromium frame. He ceremoniously filled several glasses, passed them around. He motioned to someone to come closer, offered a glass. Harry Madrid accepted it blandly. It hadn’t seemed to Cassidy at the Louis fight that they’d known each other, but now they did. Harry Madrid seemed to get around.
Cookson lifted the glass. “To me! And to my greatest acquisition!” He tapped the package. Everyone drank. The group made a little island in the center of the party, which had lost interest and was racketing along on its own.
“What is it, Markie?” Terry asked.
“A copy of the Necronomicon!”
Harry Madrid laughed. “Like he said, what is it?”
Marquardt Cookson explained, his pudgy hands cradling the new possession. He lived entirely in his own world, where there was no war, no Bataan, no real life. In his world there was only the timeless, eternal vastness of Marquardt Cookson.
Charley Drew was playing “Tonight We Love,” courtesy of Freddy Martin via Tchaikovsky, very loudly right behind him, but from what Cassidy could tell this Necronomicon was some kind of ancient Book of the Dead, full of witchcraft spells which, if you did them right, were capable of summoning up the dead and all the scary powers of the Darkness Beyond. Cookson nattered on and the champagne flowed as champagne does and Cassidy began to get a headache. He was slipping away from the nuttiness when he felt a hand on his arm. It was Harry Madrid again.
“Florida,” he said.
“What?”
“Florida. Supposed to be some guys comin’ up from Florida. Keep your ears open, you hear anything, let me know. Could be Johnny Rocco’s boys …” Harry Madrid was back to scowling at Cookson. “The fat man’s higher than a kite. Guys like that worry me. I look into my crystal ball, nothin’ there. No future. Sylvester Bean was like that. He’d been on borrowed time for twenty years, you ask me.” He blinked at Cassidy. He looked tired, older than he was. He dug a finger into his hairy ear. “You use dope, Lew?”
“Nope.”
“Atta boy.” He leaned close, took the cigar out of his mouth. “No hard feelings, Lew?”
“No hard feelings, Harry.”
“Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Harry Madrid said. “Florida? You lemme know, you hear any talk.”
Charley Drew had switched to “Cabin in the Sky,” a Vernon Duke song. Terry had once told Cassidy that Vernon Duke’s real name was Vladimir Dukelsky. He knew funny things like that, couldn’t forget them. He said it was a curse.
A woman spoke from behind him. “Don’t you find that man rather—how to say it? Creepy? Scary?”
He looked at her. A cat’s face with an upper lip that didn’t move much when she spoke. Her hair was like white gold, which she raked from her eye with a long fingernail painted brownish red, like dried blood. She wore a low-cut black cocktail dress. Her breasts were tiny. Her shoulders with the stringlike straps were frail, delicate, fine-boned. Her eyes had that faraway look, shining as if they were full of tears. They were almond-shaped, like a cat’s.
“Harry?” he said. “Yeah, I suppose. Scary, anyway. He’s a little hard to be creepy. Hard men are scary. I didn’t know you knew him.”
“Max knows everybody,” Cindy Squires said. “But I didn’t mean Harry Madrid. That one”—she inclined her head—“the fat one. With the boyfriend. Look into his eyes sometimes. He’s drowning in drugs, killing himself—”
“Oh, Markie.” Cassidy smiled. “He gets a little tedious, but he has his good points.”
“Really? Somehow I doubt that. I wish Max didn’t know him so well.”
“They do seem an odd pair. Max probably just knows him in passing.”
“Oh, you think so?” She shrugged. “Max knows everybody,” she said again. “That’s what they’ll put on his tombstone. ‘Here lies Max Bauman. He knew everybody but didn’t have a friend.’ Somebody he knows will be the death of him, too.”
“I’d say Max is pretty careful,” Cassidy said. He lit her cigarette, watched it tremble in her fingers. Her lipstick smudged the paper.
“Not careful enough. Someday when he least expects it …” She made a pistol out of a pointed forefinger and a cocked thumb. “Pa-choo, pa-choo,” she said, firing the gun. “That’ll be all for Max …”
He followed her eyes and saw Bauman standing in his tuxedo by the fireplace talking to Terry. They looked serious. Were they talking about Rocco coming up from Florida? Rocco had a place on Key Largo, a gunboat or two, ran girls and money and dope in and out of Havana. Everybody knew about Rocco, one of the old Chicago gang. He’d been in the papers using his gunboats to hunt for German U-boats off the Florida coast. Somebody had suggested giving him a medal. Was Rocco coming up from Key Largo to see Max? Was Max cutting him in on the gas stations and the stamps?
When he turned back to Cindy Squires, one eye had overflowed and a large teardrop clung to an eyelash, losing the struggle against gravity. She stuck out her lower lip like a little girl looking for a fight.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course. I always cry at parties.”
“Listen, I can’t tell if you’re serious or pulling my leg or what. You’ll just have to slow down on the curves if you want me to follow you.”
“Who said I wanted you to follow me or anything else? Why don’t you go pour your fat friend some more champagne, play the host, get him some cocaine … Oh, damn!” The tears were streaking her face. He took her arm gently. “No, no, you mustn’t touch me. He’ll see … I’ll be all right.” He withdrew his hand, watched her helplessly. “Look”—she swallowed a sob—“are you really trustworthy? Like Terry says? Do you run to Max with everything you hear?”
“You keep asking me that. Don’t be silly. I know Max, that’s all. He’s the poor guy who owns the Bulldogs and as such I feel sorry for him. Come on, smile at that.”
She sniffed, smiled. “It’s not such a hot team,” she admitted, dabbing a knuckle at a wet eye. “I need to talk to someone I can trust … I’m scared. Oh, damn, I can’t stop crying. He’s going to see me—where’s the bathroom?”
He led the way down the hallway, past the movie in the large bedroom, to his own room. The rain was blowing at the windows and it was dark in the room except for the street lamps’ glow. The bed was piled with coats. He pointed to the bathroom door.
She started across the room, then turned back, sobbing, her guard down, and stood against him with her head on his boiled shirtfront. He felt her shaking and he put his arms around her. She made herself small, he smelled her hair and kissed it. It tasted blonde.
“Cassidy,” she whispered several moments later. They hadn’t moved. He felt lulled, holding a woman, feeling her body and her warmth. Her crying had stopped. “I’m sorry about this. There’s something so sad about everything—I don’t even know you and yet you’re the person I come crying to when I’m scared …”
“What are you scared of?”
“I can’t talk to you now. He’s going to wonder where I’ve gone, I’ve got to get back.” She stood at the bathroom door. “Can we meet somewhere? I need to talk to someone, to you, I guess … I need help.” She came back and took his hand. “Please …”
“Sure, we can talk. And when it comes to help, there’s always Terry—”
“No,” she gasped. “Not Terry, anyone but Terry. You mustn’t mention any of this to Terry. Promise me—”
“All right. No Terry.”
She squeezed his hand. He didn’t let go, pulled her toward him, kissed her. Felt her warm breath in his mouth, her moist tongue, the membrane hidden beneath her tongue. She trembled against him and finally he released her. She turned quickly away, fled to the bathroom. He waited until she came back.
When they stepped out of the darkened room into the hallway, a huge figure, taller and wider than Cassidy, loomed over them.
“Ah, there you are, Miss Squires.” It was Bennie, looking concerned, almost wounded, behind his spectacles. His tuxedo fit perfectly because Max’s tailor did him, too. He wore his usual polka-dot bow tie. His eyes moved from her to Cassidy. His huge nose twitched, as if he were smelling a rat. “Lew,” he said.
“What is it, Bennie?” she said.
“Mr. Bauman wants you. I couldn’t find you.” He was slightly out of breath. It was his job to find people for Mr. Bauman and it bothered him when he couldn’t do it.
“Mr. Cassidy showed me the ladies’ room, Bennie. I wasn’t feeling well. I’m fine now.”
“I waited to make sure she was okay.” Cassidy explained himself to Bennie because no one wanted Bennie or Max upset with them. He smiled at Bennie.
“Let’s go find Max,” she said.
“Good idea,” Cassidy said.
Cindy Squires moved away, back toward the party. Bennie looked at Cassidy. He was frowning. He took off his spectacles and began polishing them with his folded handkerchief.
“Having a nice time, Bennie?”
“Lew,” Bennie said, checking the lenses and fitting the glasses over his huge ears, “you’ve got lipstick on your mouth.” He handed Lew a perfect white handkerchief. Bennie shook his head slowly. “You better be careful, Lew. You better watch yourself. Know what I mean?”
“It’s always a pleasure being threatened by you, Bennie.”
“I’d never threaten you, Lew. We’re friends. I was just thinking out loud, so to speak.” He looked sad, almost mournful. It was mainly in the eyebrows. “There’s so much pain in the world, why add to it?”
“I see your point.”
“Be careful, Lew.” Bennie turned away. “I better go see Miss Squires doesn’t get lost again. Women, Lew, never trust ’em.”
Cassidy went back into his bedroom, stood in the spot where Cindy Squires had held herself against him. He summoned up the smell of her hair, the faint memory of lilacs. There had been sapphires and diamonds at her throat, and her earrings had been sapphires matching her eyes, almost iridescent blue.
When he went back to the party, Bennie was standing with a plate of food, eating and watching Max Bauman, who was talking with Marquardt Cookson. Cindy stood quietly at Max’s side.
“Having a good time, Bennie?”
“Very enjoyable, Lew. A lovely gathering in every way.”
Bauman and Cindy Squires came over to where they stood. Bennie looked from Max to Cindy. “Mr. Bauman was wondering earlier if you’d do a song or two with Mr. Drew … could you do that, Miss Squires?”
Max looked fondly at Bennie like a man proud of a well-trained pet.
“Oh, gosh, Max, I don’t know—”
“I’d appreciate it, darling,” Max Bauman said. “Charley said he’d love to play for you.”
“All right,” she sighed. Her eyes caught Cassidy’s, the light behind the sapphires dimming as if her wattage were running low, her resistance ebbing.
She went to the piano, where Charley Drew was waiting for her. Terry stood morosely across the room, by the windows, watching the rain lashing the terrace. Bennie stood beside Cassidy, watching Bauman drawn once again into a peculiar conversational triangle with Marquardt Cookson and Harry Madrid. Bennie was staring straight ahead when he spoke. “Mr. Bauman is very fond of that girl. You might say he’s taken a deeply personal interest. Know what I mean, Lew?”
“Hey, Bennie, who do you mink you’re talking to? This is Lew. A college man. Not a chump. I got eyes, I see what’s going on.”
“Glad to hear it, Lew. She’s living out at the house now, y’know. That’s how it is. I knew you wouldn’t let me down. Mr. Bauman, he takes a real personal interest in you, too.”
Cookson had begun reciting some kind of ominous-sounding chant. Max Bauman shook his head. Harry Madrid looked on as if it were feeding time at the zoo. A buff-colored envelope was working its way out of Cookson’s pocket and his boyfriend pushed it back in.
Charley Drew’s fingers began stroking the keys, and Cindy Squires sang “Fools Rush In,” her blue eyes anchored someplace where she was all by herself. The emotions only barely hinted at in her voice were somehow palpable, reaching across the room toward Cassidy, lapping at him. She sang “The Nearness of You.”
It’s not the pale moon that excites me
That thrills and delights me
Oh no, it’s just the nearness of you.
She was so delicate, so fragile, but her hips were broad and female and strong, her sturdy legs planted wide apart when she sang. She hardly moved a muscle while she sang. No histrionics, no flailing arms, no fluttering hands. It was all in her voice. She didn’t really have much range. She was no songbird, no liltin’ Martha Tilton. But her reading of the lyrics was impeccable. Cassidy wondered where she’d come from, how she’d learned to do what she did, submerging her own personality in the song, transforming the song and herself into some new, third thing. She sang “I’ll Remember April” and Cassidy couldn’t watch anymore.
He wanted her.
She was the first woman he’d wanted, deep in his gut, since Karin, and the realization hit him with a truckload of sudden guilt and sorrow and longing. Since Karin had gone, there hadn’t been anyone. Oh, some quickies on road trips, but nothing real. Now he needed to hold someone and be held and it couldn’t be Karin and he wanted it to be Cindy Squires …
He stood just inside the doorway of the darkened room. Seven or eight people were sprawled on Terry’s bed or sitting on the floor while the projector’s light beam poked through the filter of cigarette smoke. He sipped the Scotch and water and held the cold glass against his forehead. The rain drummed on the window. Robert Montgomery was caught in a wonderful fantasy of life and death, love and the power of memory. He was dead by accident, a mistake, and had been allowed to come back as someone else and met the girl he’d once loved in that other life. She was a stranger, but, still, there was a spark of something … as if he’d known her, or someone very like her, once before …
He stood in the dark trying to get Cindy Squires’s face and voice and scent out of his mind, failing. She was out of bounds. She was Max Bauman’s girl. That made her more dangerous than Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose put together. And how many ways could you betray a man? You could betray him to the will of Harry Madrid, spy on him, rat on him … and you could betray him with his girlfriend. Lots of guys had doubtless done both.
But not to Max Bauman. Not guys who lived to tell the story. It was a dangerous fucking game is what it was.
And Cindy Squires brought with her, like the perfume, a fill-the-room-with-danger quality. There was something about her that made him want to put on the old armor and mount his steed and charge on it, something about her, like theme music, that made him want her even while he knew there were people who wouldn’t survive, whose blood would overflow the scuppers. Maybe he just didn’t care. The world was dripping with blood, why should he be immune? He closed his eyes and there she was, the sapphire eyes, the way she raked the sharp nails so near her eye … the way her body had quaked against him when she cried …
Then he heard two men talking behind him, out of sight in the hallway.
“So tell me, Harry, what’s bothering our Terry? He’s not himself, not atall, not atall.” It was Father Paddy, Terry’s uncle.
“Can’t say as I know what you’re talking about, Padre.” That was Harry Madrid, all right. Cassidy got a whiff of the cherry tobacco. He must have been lighting up the little pipe.
“He’s mighty worried, our Terry,” Father Paddy said.
“Somebody just put a couple slugs in him,” Harry allowed. “Makes a fella kinda peaked, I reckon, don’t you?”
“It’s not just that. He kept saying people had it in for him long before his misfortune. Well, I thought it’d stop—y’know, thinking it was this Herrin who’d had it in for him, but no, he’s still worried. Not that he lets on to the world in general. But, hellfire, I’m the lad’s old uncle Paddy, not much he keeps from me …”
“But he never says who, that it? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, Padre? If Terry said anything at all, you’d let me know … a man gets shot, sometimes he gets funny ideas afterward, don’t make no sense, I’ve seen it happen before.” Harry Madrid was puffing, the scent turned the corner, seeped into the bedroom. “There might be something I could do about it. You know what I mean, Padre?”
“Aye, and you’re a fine fella, Harry Madrid.” They had begun moving off down the hallway. “I’ll let you know if I hear him leaving hints behind him. I appreciate your concern, Harry. I’ll be lighting a candle for you.”
Harry chuckled. “Much obliged, I’m sure.” And then they were gone.
When the movie was over, Cassidy went back to the living room. Bryce Huntoon was standing at the bar talking to Cindy Squires. He was one of those guys burning up the tracks between New York and Washington. They seemed to have all the answers, leaping upon them like hounds gathered around a medieval dining table snapping up scraps. Gossip was the valuable currency of the day and everybody had a source somewhere. He wondered if Cindy Squires was impressed with Huntoon and his uniform and his connections. He hoped not. He was already feeling jealous and the poor bastard was just talking to her. But he was also a ladies’ man …
Later on people started to leave. The party was over. It was past midnight. Terry and Cassidy were patting people on the back, standing by the door. Terry’s face was pale and drawn. Lew figured his back was giving him trouble.
Paul Cassidy, with the screenwriters and the publicist and a couple of girls in tow, stopped to tell his son he was hoping to get into film production for the army. It would mean he’d be going overseas. Maybe North Africa where Rommel’s Panzer Korps was working the desert like they owned it. He was excited at the prospect.
Charley Drew kept playing the late-night tunes and then almost everyone was gone. Cassidy made a last drink, leaned on the bar with his back to the mirror, looking out over the room. Cindy Squires slowly circled the place snapping off most of the lamps until it was restful and dim. The piano went on softly. The rain streamed down the French windows overlooking Park Avenue in the fog below. Bennie the Brute leaned back in a deep chair, crossed his long legs, tugged at his bow tie until it was dangling down his shirtfront. Cassidy casually touched the smudge of lipstick on his own shirt. Max Bauman’s face had collapsed. He looked old suddenly, staring at the rain. Cindy Squires sat down on the floor, her legs underneath her, leaned her head back against the couch, and closed her eyes. Her rounded thighs were tight against the black dress and her belly was imperceptibly rounded. Cassidy watched her and sipped his drink and tried to figure out what he should do, how he was going to go about it. There was Rocco coming up from Florida, there was Max up against Dewey and Luciano and Harry Madrid. There was Lew Cassidy with a wife he couldn’t get to … and unable to take his eyes off Cindy Squires … who was scared and wanted to believe he was as trustworthy as Terry said.
In the stillness, with the piano tinkling forlornly, Charley Drew hunched over the keys, exploring a world of his own, Max Bauman began to talk.
“Well, it’s quite an old world, isn’t it, folks? Nice party, Terry, Lew. Very nice.” He looked around at their faces and put his hands up, squeezed his temples. “I got a call today, I haven’t told anyone about it yet. Not even Bennie, Cindy here. From a navy friend of my son Irvie’s. Another officer. Quite a story he had to tell. Irvie … quite a boy, my Irvie. Lotsa guts, you said that, Lew. Guts.”
Cassidy nodded but Max didn’t see him. He wasn’t looking at anybody. He sat on the couch, his hands clenched on his knees.
“Communications officer. Ship got torpedoed in the bow … Irvie was down in the communications office with a buddy of his when they got hit … hell of a mess, according to this fella. Fire. Ship started to heel over … see, thing was, they couldn’t get out, Irvie and his pal. So they started playing poker. Poker! Can you believe that? Cool under fire. You know how this fella knew? I’ll tell ya. He was on the flight deck and they could talk to Irvie and his buddy down below … all the time they were trapped in the communications office they were talking to the guys on the flight deck. Guts, Lewis … Guts! There wasn’t any way to get them out, see, they all knew it, they weren’t going to make it … the ship kept heeling, the water coming in, the pressure building on the bulkheads, the air getting thin, hard to breathe … and Irvie and his buddy just kept playing poker … they knew they weren’t getting out but they didn’t panic, they kept on talking to the guys topside … then it was time to say good-bye … Irvie was the last one to talk, he said tell my dad I’m not afraid, I know what’s going on, it’s time for us to sign off now, tell Dad I love him, tell him I’m going out ten bucks to the good … and then there wasn’t anymore talk … ten bucks to the good, that’s quite a boy, my son Irvie …”
Tears were welling up in the creases of Max Bauman’s face, spilling over, but he wasn’t making a sound.
Charley Drew hadn’t heard the story. He was playing a pretty song, singing softly to himself. “I saw you last night … and got that old feeling …”
Cassidy set his drink down on what he thought from the corner of his attention was a bar towel. It was instead a buff-colored envelope. The same one he’d seen in Markie Cookson’s pocket. It was thick with no name on it. Cassidy slid it off the countertop and opened the loose flap. Everyone was sitting quietly in the semidarkness, thinking about Irvie Bauman. From the envelope Cassidy slid ten one-thousand-dollar bills. His throat went dry and he took another sip of his drink. He put the currency back into the envelope and replaced it on the counter, set his drink on it. Cookson had casually left ten grand behind. For Terry. Which was a hell of a way to say thanks for a pretty fair party.
Cindy Squires slowly turned her head until she was looking at Cassidy. Her face was expressionless but her eyes lingered until he returned the stare. Max Bauman reached forward and folded her delicate white hand in his.
Lucky Luciano said Max was doing the Nazis’ dirty work on the docks. And the Nazis were turning Max’s family in the old country into soap. And Johnny Rocco might be coming north to get his cut of a wartime racket of Max’s. Everybody was after Max and Cassidy wanted his girlfriend and Harry Madrid was standing like grim Fate in the shadows and Terry had ten fresh ones from the fat man …
But in his mind Cassidy saw a different kind of headline.
GANGSTER’S KID DIES A HERO