A COUPLE WEEKS LATER BENNIE the Brute arrived with an invitation from Max Bauman. “He said to tell you he’s sorry about burdening you that night with his private grief,” Bennie announced by way of preface. “He said to tell you it was a fine party and he hopes he didn’t put a damper on it. He’d like to have you join him for dinner down on the Jersey shore. Day after tomorrow.”
Terry nodded and looked at Cassidy. “Sure,” he said, “that’s fine by me.”
“How’s Max holding up?” Terry asked.
“He’s having a tough time,” Bennie confided. “It’ll be good for him, taking a little outing. Can’t get his mind off what happened to the boy. Wakes up in the night shouting to the kid. He thinks he’s on the flight deck and he can’t get below to save the boy and he keeps hearing Irvie begging him to help … Frankly it gives me the shakes when I hear him screaming like that.” He shook his head at the thought and so did Cassidy. The idea of Bennie the Brute with the shakes gave you pause. “He’s got something he wants to show you guys. Fireworks, he calls it. But you’ve got to go to Jersey for the full effect. I’ll tell him you’re on, then, both of you?”
“Anyone else in the party?” Terry was clipping the end of one of the big Havanas.
Bennie shrugged. “Small party. That’s all I know—”
“Is Max really bad off?” Cassidy said.
“It’s a bad time for him, that’s all. It was bad when the missus went back in ’34, too, but at least he had Irvie and the daughter to help him through it. Now there’s no Arlene, the daughter’s married and in Phoenix for her husband’s asthma, and all of a sudden Irvie’s never coming back. It’s a bad time for Mr. Bauman.”
“Well,” Cassidy said, “he’s got Miss Squires. That must be some consolation.”
“Tell him we wouldn’t miss his fireworks,” Terry said.
When Bennie left, Cassidy sat for a long time in the gathering darkness of a murky afternoon thinking of the house overlooking the waters of Oyster Bay. A house fit for Jay Gatz. And Max Bauman waking up screaming for his dead son in the depths of the night. Bennie’s slippered feet echoing and flapping along the hallway, as he hastened to his master’s side. Together they might sit in Max’s library, surrounded by volumes purchased by the running yard and never read, sipping Scotch, waiting for first light. He wondered where Cindy Squires fit into the picture. And he wondered why she hadn’t called him, hadn’t come to him as she had wanted to …
But the next day Max had developed pleurisy and was laid up. He’d been out patrolling the shoreline with a shotgun in the cold and rain. All over Long Island the citizenry had formed themselves into squads patrolling at night, looking out for German saboteurs coming ashore from U-boats. It was no joke. A few had been caught and no one knew how many had gotten through and lost themselves in the canyons of the city. Max had undertaken his patrol with great enthusiasm and the inclement weather too many nights in a row had brought him low.
Bennie showed up with the news that Max wasn’t coming but the fireworks expedition was still on. It was still dank and clammy, like a bad November, and Cindy Squires was wearing a heavy, belted trench coat and a beret that made her look like a beautiful French Resistance fighter. Or rather, Paul Cassidy’s idea of such a creature in the movies. Paired with Errol Flynn, blowing up bridges and ammo dumps.
The big Chrysler wore an E sticker on its window, now that rationing was in full effect. An A got you only one stamp, which was worth five gallons of gasoline a week. A B was for commuters. C was for cars used in the line of work by salesmen and such. Es were hard to get. You still had to use stamps but you could get as many as you wanted. They were for emergency vehicles. Reporters had them, tow-truck drivers, cops, politicians with pull. And, apparently, gangsters.
Terry rode in front with Bennie; Cassidy got in back with Cindy Squires. Bennie kept glancing in the rearview mirror, nervously, as if he didn’t really want to catch Cassidy kissing her but had his responsibilities to his employer to consider. He needn’t have worried. Cassidy and Cindy sat in opposite corners, staring out the windows.
When Terry turned on the radio, she seemed to pull herself back from her thoughts, started to talk. She told him that Max had told her about Karin’s being trapped in Germany. She wanted to hear all about it and Cassidy told her. She asked him if he had a picture and he slid a snapshot from his wallet. She said, “She’s beautiful. She looks sad, though.”
“She had a toothache that day. She’s not normally sad.”
“You must be lonely—”
“I miss her, if that’s what you mean.”
“I guess that is what I mean.”
“In that sense, yes, I’m lonely. I’ve always been a loner but she changed that. It’s good, loving someone.”
“It must be,” she said.
They talked about the war. It turned out that her father was English, her mother American, and they were both still in London. “My father is at the Foreign Office and Mummy works in her garden. And arranges the church jumble sales and she’s a fire warden. She kept a very stiff upper lip when the bombing was bad. They sent me over here in ’38 because war was coming and they didn’t want us to be in it. My brother Tony and me. He’s fourteen and I’m twenty-two. There’s my sister Gillian, she’s living in the Cotswolds with our aunt, safe enough, I should think. She’s twenty-three. Tony goes to school at a school called Deerfield. My mother’s family is from Boston. We stayed with them for a time. What about you, Lew? Before you played football?”
“There is no before, not really. I went to Deerfield, too.”
“Really? What a small world! But you must have been born somewhere—”
“Los Angeles. My father’s in the movie business. My mother died before I got to college. We lived in New York, too. No brothers or sisters. Football, Terry, Karin.” He shrugged. “The war.”
They had crossed into Jersey. Looking back across the Hudson it was a shock to see how dark the city looked with the new dim-out laws in effect. The lights of Broadway were already a memory. There was a war on.
She was looking back across the river, too.
“I was there,” she said, pointing, “the night the Normandie burned.”
“You were?” He flashbacked on Luciano, the smells of the disinfectant and the lavish lunch mingling in memory. “Why was that?”
She moved away from the window and he smelled her, saw her profile in the darkness, forgot the prison and Luciano. Then he saw Bennie’s eyes flickering in the mirror, watching.
“Max wanted to see it so we drove down to the pier. You know how everybody knows Max, we got close … it was like a peek into Dante’s last circle. The hull was red-hot … red. And all the hoses were spraying it and the water just kept hissing and turning to steam. The fire crackled, it was loud, and this incredible hissing sound, like a million snakes. The fire was so bright in the night and there were all these searchlights trained on the ship … it was like nothing anyone could imagine. There were all these beautiful rainbows—”
“In the middle of the night?”
“That’s what made it so unearthly. The lights were so bright the hoses made rainbows with the water. Then it just turned on its side and sank.” Her voice trailed off.
They didn’t talk much the rest of the way. There were no references to their previous conversation. He saw her pale hand on the seat between them. He put his hand over it, closed his fingers around hers. She made no attempt to move away, just kept looking out the window. The silence made Bennie nervous. He damn near ran the car off the road while trying to keep track of the backseat in the mirror.
There was a dinky little police roadblock on the way to the roadhouse. One cop car, two overage officers huddled inside out of the wind whipping off the water. Bennie waved a piece of paper at the one who got out and came over to have a look. He was wearing a yellow slicker. Sand pelted in through the window Bennie opened. Then he walked up ahead in the headlamps and moved the sawhorses blocking the lonely road.
“All these roads are closed off now,” Terry said.
“Why?” she asked.
“German saboteurs. They’re landing them from U-boats all along the coast. Miami Beach, Cape Hatteras, all the way up to Nova Scotia. I sure as hell pity any of ’em run across these two hardcases.” He laughed sarcastically, nodding at the guy holding the sawhorse, waving them through.
They turned off the road onto a sand-blown path leading up to a jutting promontory which hung over the beach like the prow of a derelict sailing ship. The wind blew cold and salty and the sand rattled against the side panels. There was a dim red bulb over the once brightly lit entrance. The windows were hung with blackout curtains. The Chrysler was the only car in the lot.
Terry got out, pulling his hat brim down against the wind. He held the door for Cindy Squires and Cassidy slid across with his cane and got out behind her.
“Must be tough staying in business,” Cassidy said, surveying the emptiness.
Terry said, “He’s got a very special, very loyal clientele. Max, a few other businessmen.” He winked at Cassidy. Cindy had gone on past them, taken Bennie’s arm, and was leaning into the wind, heading for the doorway. A man was standing there, wiping his hands on a voluminous white apron. “They use this place for special meetings. Like a club, you might say.”
“But not like the Elks and the Rotary,” Cassidy said.
Terry’s laughter blew away on the wind. The surf was pounding on the beach below like the planet’s slow, steady heartbeat. There was a constant tremor underfoot. Cassidy half expected to look up and see the Giants bearing down on him. Terry threw his arm around Cassidy’s shoulder.
“Watch out for my cane. What are we doing here, anyway, Terry? What fireworks?”
“We’re getting sand in our shoes, that’s what.” He coughed, a staccato little sound, like a muffled gunshot. “Showtime later. First we eat.” He coughed again. “Damn lung.” He winced. “Back’s acting up, too.” He grabbed Cassidy’s arm and they soldiered onward.
At first it was quiet, like showing up for a party on the wrong night.
Even the jukebox playing “O Sole Mio” was quiet, making the place seem even emptier. The fat man in the apron gave Bennie a two-handed shake, said to Cassidy that he was Giuseppe, his voice so thick with an Italian accent he could barely make it out. Giuseppe waddled about greeting everyone, then showed them to a large round table by a side window facing seaward. The window was covered by a heavy black drape. He told them they were the first to arrive but he’d had a call from the others who’d be along later. There must have been thirty tables, each with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth and a candle in a wax-drenched Chianti bottle. The room was the repository of half the world’s known reserves of candle wax. It was spooky as hell, just the four of them at the big table set for eight. All those flickering candles, the rest darkness, the windows shrouded, like an empty church, the funeral of an unloved man.
Giuseppe insisted that they begin their dinner without waiting for the rest of their party. Fried calamari, clams Casino, fettuccine in a red sauce, veal Marsala, on and on the plates kept coming. It was the goddamnedest dinner Cassidy had ever seen, all that food, all the Italian music sobbing away, all that shadowy emptiness, Giuseppe trotting back and forth from the kitchen working up a sweat. And nobody having much to say.
Then, over the wind whining at the windows, Cassidy heard the sounds of another car arriving, doors slamming, men shouting to each other. Bennie stood up quickly, his tweed jacket falling open, the butt of the forty-five automatic showing above the holster strapped across his shoulder. The door burst open and four men squeezed through, brushing sand from their trench coats. “Bennie! Brute, you old son of a gun!” The biggest man came across the room and grabbed Bennie in a mighty hug. Bennie looked embarrassed, smiled self-consciously, said, “Leonard, the same as ever.” He backed away and Leonard pumped his hand, turned to the three men fanned out behind him. Their faces were shaded by their hat brims. “Bennie, you remember Artie and Marvin and Chicago Willie—”
“Sure, I remember,” Bennie said. “How are you, boys? You’ve had a long drive. You must be hungry.” He looked like a teacher addressing a bunch of delinquents. “Take off your coats, make yourselves comfortable.” The smallest man, Marvin, put a large attaché case on a table and slipped out of his trench coat. He was wearing a brown suit nipped in at the waist.
“Havana, last time I seen you, Brute,” Chicago Willie said, his voice a hoarse whisper, as if he didn’t have quite all of his throat. “You’re still one helluva big guy, Brute.”
They all laughed and Artie said, “Still a helluva big guy,” his face an unmoving, thin, hollow-cheeked mask.
Leonard beamed. “Man ain’t been made can take Brute in a fair fight.”
Marvin said, “Last time I saw a fair fight was in Pocatello, Idaho, 1919.”
“Pocatello, Idaho, 1919,” Artie said.
They came to the table and Bennie introduced them. Artie had a moustache like Terry’s, thin and carefully tended. All four of them were deeply tanned, darker than Terry’s sunlamp job at its best. Leonard said, “Cassidy? Lew Cassidy? Well, I’ll be damned! You won me some money last fall, Lew. That touchdown spree of yours, I kept puttin’ money down, sayin’ you’d keep it up and sure as shootin’ you did! Damn good to see you … sorry about that leg, Lew.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Cassidy said. “I had a good run. Lotta guys get hurt before they get to the good times.”
Artie looked at him across the candles. “Lotta guys get hurt before they get to the good times. Lew’s a regular philosopher, Lennie.”
“Comes in handy,” Cassidy said. “You oughtta try it.”
They all sat down and Giuseppe began doing his number all over again. Cassidy sat quietly listening to the byplay, watching the four tanned faces, wondering what was the occasion. Terry seemed to know them slightly and joined in the general conversation which concerned itself mainly with sports. Cindy Squires leaned back in her chair, looked into the coffee. Lennie said they were going on to Montreal in the morning with a shipment. Tonight they were going to stay at the roadhouse. “Giuseppe’s got rooms for us upstairs,” Lennie said, “that is, if we don’t stay up all night lying about the old days, hey, Brute?” Lennie liked talking about Havana in the old days. It was like his needle had stuck there, in his favorite passage.
“So how’s Johnny these days?” Terry lit a cigar and watched the smoke drift across the table into Artie’s face. “I hear he likes hunting for U-boats—”
“Johnny,” Lennie said. “He wants to know how Johnny is! He’s great, he’s Johnny!” All the food and wine had given his face a shine.
“He’s in the pink,” Marvin said.
“Yeah,” Chicago Willie whispered through a mouthful of veal, “Johnny’s in the pink.”
“I thought he was coming with you this trip.”
“Well, he came as far as Philly,” Lennie said, “then he had to go into New York to see a man. Do some business. He’s sorry he missed you, Brute, he told me personally to pass that on.”
Bennie nodded and Terry said, “No great tragedy, not since Max couldn’t be here either. Funny, both of them changing their plans like that.” He grinned.
Artie said, “Funny. Two ships that pass in the night.”
After the zabaglione and the coffee Terry looked around the table. “Whattaya say we hit those slot machines? Bennie? Why not, Artie? You feel lucky tonight, Willie?”
“Sure,” Chicago Willie whispered. He was a thin man of indeterminate age with thick reddish hair parted in the middle. He looked like a hick. “I feel lucky.” None of Johnny Rocco’s boys were hicks, however they looked.
Cassidy shook his head. Cindy Squires yawned. Bennie said something to her, she nodded, and everyone else got up and headed back through an archway toward a back room. Somebody turned on the lights and Cassidy saw the slot machines. They began to whir and ring their little bells, the fruit spinning. Marvin had taken his attaché case with him. They sounded like rowdy kids.
“Have you figured this out yet?” Cindy Squires looked at Cassidy, something like fear, or maybe dread, in her eyes. She turned nervously to the blackout curtains, began tugging at the corner to peek out.
“I’m not sure there’s any point to it.”
“You don’t seriously think this is just a casual get-together, do you? You weren’t born yesterday, were you, Lew?” She gnawed momentarily at her thumbnail. “Max has some kind of business deal with these guys but then at the last minute he and Rocco don’t show up.”
“He can’t help it if he gets pleurisy.”
“Is that what he said? He doesn’t have pleurisy.” She sighed. “It’s as if he wanted us all out of town for the night.”
“What kind of business has he got with these guys?” Cassidy figured the hell with it, he’d ask. “Does he talk to you about that stuff?”
She gave him a long look, then ignored the question. “I worry about him, isn’t that the limit? He’s got guns all over the house, big guns, little guns. And he’s been so blue ever since he found out about Irvie …” She worried at the thumbnail some more, chipping the paint. “I’m afraid he might … you know.” She pointed her forefinger to her temple like a pistol. “Listen to me—why should I worry? It would solve everything …”
“Cindy, you wanted to talk to me, you wanted to see me alone—”
She rushed on, shaking her head. “He’s so blue and he thinks he’s getting old. He says he sees signs, he’s not as young as he used to be … I tell him he’s crazy, what he’s so worried about, it can happen to anyone, including young guys. I wish you’d tell me to shut up, Cassidy. I shouldn’t be telling you this.” She had that flat, solemn way of speaking that caught you off-guard, robbed you of your own sense of humor because she seemed to have so little herself.
“Are you talking about his depression or his sexual capabilities?”
“What’s the difference? When a man’s so sad and blue it’s not surprising he can’t get his penis to stand up. Oh, what do I know about men? Pay no attention, I’m raving …” She smiled hopelessly.
“He’s got Bennie. And he’s got you. Bennie’s loyal to the last drop. You’re so beautiful … Well, what more could a man want?”
“A wife he’s loved all his life, a son he had all his hopes in, a daughter near enough to visit and show him his grandchildren … he could want all those things.” She stared into her empty coffee cup. Her expression, her voice, he had the feeling they wouldn’t have changed if she’d just come in to announce Judgment Day. Maybe she was, in some weird way. Max’s Judgment Day. “What do you mean, he’s got me?”
“You can answer that better than I. You’re the one who’s so familiar with his penis.”
She looked at him and he thought she might slap him. Her face didn’t show anything but there was something in her eyes.
“Fair comment,” she said at last, “and I brought it on myself. I brought his penis up.” A hint of a smile teased at the corner of her mouth. “Or didn’t, which is more to the point. Have I just made a joke?”
Cassidy nodded. “A small one.”
She laughed, covered her perfect white teeth with her hand. “Now you’ve made one. Oh, poor Max. Poor Cindy.” She sighed. “You held my hand in the car. Why?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you want me?”
“Yes, I want you.”
“I knew you did,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to know if you were trustworthy. If we made a bargain, could I trust you.”
“What kind of bargain?”
“You could do whatever you wanted with me but you’d have to help me in return … but it only works if you’re brave and trustworthy.”
“I don’t think I want it so easy, not that way—and I doubt if you really do, either.”
“I know exactly what I want. And if you think it would be easy, you’d better think again. You’re right, Max has got me, I’m his. So nothing at all about me would be easy. I guess it all comes down to how much you want me—”
“I hadn’t contemplated such a businesslike arrangement—”
“It’s all I can offer.” She bit her lip and looked away.
“I suppose there might be problems. Like Bennie. Every time I look at you Bennie practically goes for his gat. I’d hate having Bennie unhappy with me—”
“Well, maybe you’re better off forgetting me. You can get out in time, write off the deal, your virtue intact. Anyway, you’re a married man—”
“That’s unnecessarily cruel.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It was a rotten thing to say. I’m an expert at saying hurtful things, even when I don’t mean to. And I really don’t mean to hurt you.” She looked up, caught his eye. “Really, truly, I don’t want to hurt you, but I will. I always do. I’ve hurt Max, I’m going to hurt him some more before it’s over. I know that. I’m Max’s steady whore, do you understand that? He gave me a job I wanted because he wanted me. It was all very straightforward at the beginning. He listened to me sing, then took me into his office, told me the job was mine if … if … He told me to undress right there. He told me he was having a little trouble and he felt sure I could cure him if I really tried. He wasn’t brutal, I don’t want it to sound that way … he was nice, sort of sad. When I was naked he asked me to do certain things while he watched me and then I knelt in front of him and worked on him for an hour and at the end of the hour I knew I had the job and Max … Max and I had each other, we were bonded in a way, but now, no matter how I try, I can’t help him anymore, but he says I have to try, he needs me, he says without me he has no hope … so I do … but I hate it now, I hate what he makes me do, I hate myself for doing it, and I hate myself for failing, and I hate him … but he won’t let me go. It’s his need I can’t break away from. Do you understand? God, I’m trusting you too much already. He won’t let me go. Oh, Cassidy, I am a whore, I really, truly am. And that’s the only kind of bargain I can make, all I have to offer …”
She sat quietly for a while, her hands clasped in her lap. The guys playing the slot machines were still making a lot of noise. “Sometimes,” she said eventually, as if she’d been mulling it over in her mind, “I think it’s just my nature. Maybe I should be the one who dies, uses one of those guns of his. Maybe I’d be better off. I don’t know.”
“Cindy …” It was as if she were in the confessional and he, a worldly priest, heard her reciting her sins and couldn’t help her or himself, wanted her more the more he heard, wanted her in all her calculation and despair.
“That’s what it is. I need to be a whore.” She shivered. “You mustn’t think I talk like this—I’ve never said these things to anyone before.”
“Why me?”
“You’re just lucky, I guess.” She smiled tentatively, wondering if he still wanted anything to do with her.
“This will all pass, you’ll see.”
“You’re an optimist, Cassidy. You don’t want to see me for what I am. The fact is, there’s something cold in me that rather enjoys being a whore. It takes all the risk out of things. I was one, I think, the very first time. I was seventeen. He was the choirmaster at the little church … I wanted to see if I could break through his propriety. It was so easy. Oh, my goodness,” she said, pointing at the wine bottle. “In vino Veritas.”
The slot machines whirred and jangled. Occasionally someone would shout gleefully.
“Let’s get a breath of sea air,” Cassidy said. “I wish I knew why the hell we’re here—”
“Fireworks.”
“Yeah, fireworks. Well, you’ve done your part. I don’t get it. If Max isn’t sick, why did he send us out here alone?”
She was slipping into her coat and putting on the beret. “Max always has his reasons.”
“Did you know ahead of time he wasn’t coming?”
She shook her head. “It was news to me.”
They stood on the balcony off the dining room, at the top of a long flight of stairs leading down to the sand. The wind whipped off the ocean like it had a personal grudge. Stray arrows of rain and bits of sand nipped at them. She pulled the collar up around her face, turned to shelter against him. He felt the damp wool of her beret on his cheek. Dogs were howling and yapping somewhere down below where the surf furled and rolled in the darkness. A couple of low-intensity red flares were stuck in the sand like sparklers on the Fourth of July. From time to time the shadow of a man with a large dog at his heels would pass across the faint red gloom. Volunteer coast guards on their nightly rounds.
Her compact weight pressed against him. “War is bloody,” she said, sounding English, using bloody for rotten. “I can’t believe they don’t just stop it … Irvie Bauman, blackout curtains, saboteurs landing by dark of night, people getting marched off to war. It’s all so utterly ridiculous, if you want my opinion.” She burrowed her fists against the front of his trench coat. “War is bloody damn nonsense.”
She was trembling and he put his arm around her, holding her tight. The gale whistled in the eaves of the roof’s overhang. Awnings flapped like they were trying to lift Giuseppe’s off the runway. Out of nowhere a Jeep snarled through the cocoon of darkness below and sped past the flares, was gone again.
“Cassidy, do you ever feel pointless?”
“Everybody does,” he said. “Sometimes. Comes of thinking too much.”
“Like there’s no design behind our existence? That it’s all just random and that time blunts all the little personal tragedies and that none of it matters for very long? Not the living, not the dying … that’s all just for now and now just lasts a minute, before it’s gone, just gone.”
“Look, it’s a universal fear.”
“Well, that’s the excuse I use for everything. What difference does any of it make? As a little girl I used to sit in the cemetery in the little village in the Cotswolds where we summered. And I’d wonder, who were these people who slept beneath me now? Their lives were important to them—my God, Hardy wrote his novels about them—and then they were gone and a little girl was sitting on their gravestones … what difference had their lives made? Well, what difference does it make if I’m a whore and Max is a gangster and your leg is all torn up and Irvie’s dead? We’re all going to be dead and forgotten so soon … Anyway, I feel like an imbecile telling you all this rubbish. It’s all my excuse for being no better than a cheap tart. Let’s pretend I didn’t say it, is that possible, Cassidy?”
“Probably not.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t. Well, hard cheese for me.”
“It’s not important.”
“Who says?”
“Writer, Scott Fitzgerald. He said there aren’t many things that are important. And they’re not very important.”
“I must remember that.”
“Why? It’s not important.”
She laughed. “He was right. It’s all pointless.”
“It’s the war,” he said.
“I wish that’s all it were.”
“You know, I really do think I’m in love with you, Cindy.”
“I suppose you are. It’s not me. It’s the war.”
“I’m afraid it’s you. I’ve known it for a while. I think I was lost from the day you came to my hospital room and lied about the flowers being Max’s idea … I think maybe I started loving you right then.”
“You’re going to be sorry, you know that.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Your judgment is clouded now. You’re in love with a worthless little tart.”
He grabbed her, turned her to face him, stared into her pale, wounded face. He hadn’t realized she was fighting back tears. He kissed her cheek, tasting the salty warmth, then kissed her mouth and she opened herself and took him inside.
Breathless, he leaned back, still holding her. “Don’t talk that way anymore. I’ve got to think about what I’m going to do … But no bargains between us, no business relationship. Anything we do for each other, we do. No strings attached. No deals, no bargains. Got that straight?”
“Forget me, Cassidy. It’s bound to turn out badly. It’ll all go wrong and why should you get dragged down, too—”
“Shut up, Cindy. You don’t scare me—”
“I’m just trying to warn you—”
“Why? None of it’s very important—”
“Because if I could love anyone, I’d love you.”
“You can. You already love me—”
“I know, I know,” she whispered. “Kiss me once. It won’t make any difference soon enough. Just another little girl someday, thinking in a cemetery, sitting on a gravestone, wondering who we were …”
He held her and wanted to hold her until they were no longer afraid, until whatever was going to happen happened and they had taken their places in the long procession and the story was told and he kept holding her and he felt himself crying for the first time in years and years and years, since his mother had died, and just for an instant he thought it was the biting wind in his face or maybe it was the war but, no, of course, he knew what it was. It was Cindy Squires.
The door behind them banged open and Terry and Giuseppe came out, followed by Bennie, who looked at Cindy, then at Cassidy, blinking behind his lenses. Giuseppe was pointing out into the darkness. “Keepa watchin’ out there, you’ll see the fireworks. Not every night, mosta nights.” He shrugged palms-up, as if it were not his responsibility. “Justa keepa lookin’.” He went back inside. Cassidy wished they’d all go back inside and leave him alone with Cindy. His heartbeat was racing. He couldn’t let himself look at her, not while Bennie was there.
She pulled away from his side, leaned on the railing. Terry produced a pair of binoculars and scanned the night. “Hell,” he said, “this could take hours. Let’s mount watches. I’ll take the first. An hour. Then you’re up, Lew.”
Bennie held the door for Lew and Cindy. Back in the dining room the others were setting up a card game. Bennie sat in with them, facing Cassidy and Cindy. She wrapped herself in her coat, curled up on two chairs, and went immediately to sleep. Cassidy watched her. Her mouth dropped open about half an inch and she began to snore very softly, like a child. He watched her for an hour and thought about what had just happened between them and about what he ought to do about it and then Terry came in and handed him the binoculars. They felt like ice. “Let us know if you see anything,” he said. He went to join the poker game.
It came about half an hour into his watch.
At first it looked like a magician’s pinkish-orange paper flower popping up, unfolding in the black void of ocean and the night. For a moment he forgot he had the binoculars, simply strained to see what was going on out there. The ball of color grew larger and brighter, glowing, creating a halo around the darker center.
He brought the binocs to the bridge of his nose and adjusted the focus now that he had something to focus on.
Fire. An immense explosion of fire, so far away as to be soundless against the surf and the wind.
He banged at the door. “Get out here!”
They came through the doorway in a rush. Cindy was rubbing her eyes with her fists, like a child awakened on Christmas Eve to see Santa passing overhead.
“Judas Priest!” Lennie whispered. Cassidy handed him the binoculars.
“What is it?” Cindy yawned into her fist.
Bennie leaned his huge hands on the railing and whistled. He slipped his fedora off, passed his hand over the high dome of his balding head. “Extraordinary …”
“What is it?” She sounded sleepy and impatient.
“Merchant ship,” Terry said. “One of ours. This is the war, right off New York City. The U-boat wolf packs are hunting all along our coastline.”
“The Nazis,” she said in wonderment.
“Well, they’re keeping it pretty quiet,” Terry said. “People would go nuts if they realized just how bad it is. Better than a hundred ships have gone down so far.”
“It’s a gauntlet,” Bennie mused.
The fire had flattened out and was burning along an imaginary line. The waterline. Not so imaginary. The line between one kind of death and another.
“There must be men in the water out there,” Cindy whispered. “Drowning and burning … and screaming …”
Cassidy held her arm, pulled her close in the darkness.
“That’s right,” Terry said.
“Why don’t we do something? What about our navy?” Her voice was small, shaking.
“There isn’t enough navy,” Terry said.
There was another silent explosion. Two merchant ships.
Voices were calling on the beach.
“Coast Guard patrols. Can’t have the public coming out for the free show—”
“Like us,” she said.
The fires were burning unchecked, spreading as the oil and gasoline drifted on the water.
An hour later they were still burning.
Cindy went inside and Cassidy followed her, leaving the rest of them passing the glasses back and forth. It had begun raining steadily but they couldn’t tear themselves away.
She sat with her head on her arm on the table.
“Damn it, this is all insane, Cassidy.” Her voice was muffled. “Fireworks. Men out there filling up with saltwater and burning oil. And we drive down for a casual outing to watch. It’s like my grandparents crossing Europe to get to the Crimea. Making camp on the hills above the battle. Women in fine dresses. Servants setting up the trays for tea. They could hear the screams of the dying … Take me home, Cassidy, or get me drunk. This whole night is just too crazy.”
“I don’t think our friends want to go yet.”
“Oh, well, then God knows we have to stay. While Terry and the Immovable Object and their creepy gangster pals get their kicks. Fuck them. Fuck all of us …”
He sat down beside her to wait. She probably didn’t know it but she needed company. Or was it that he did?
Well, as Fitzgerald said, it wasn’t important.
Morning came gray and harsh and raining. The slate cloud cover merged at the eastern horizon with the iron sea and a great fogbank was out there, moving inland. Giuseppe made coffee and his wife bustled in with baskets of hot rolls and bread with slabs of cold butter. The blackout curtains were rolled up and secured on hooks. Cindy’s eyes were red and she sipped her coffee, staring blankly at the fog. She’d come back from the bathroom looking scrubbed and girlish. She made a face and said, “I brushed my teeth with toilet paper. Aren’t we ever going home? Are we stuck here for eternity? Like Outward Bound?” The jukebox was playing “Come Back to Sorrento.”
With morning’s light the poker game broke up. Lennie stood and stretched long simian arms. They’d all taken off their coats, showing guns in shoulder holsters. Marvin gnawed on a roll after dunking it in his coffee. Artie wore a lemon-yellow tie with a dark blue shirt and yellow suspenders and didn’t look any different than he had upon arrival. His beard hadn’t even grown, while the others had stubble darkening their faces. Artie was something else.
Cassidy watched Artie and decided he was the one hardcase in the bunch, the real ice man.
“Come on, you guys,” Lennie said, waving his arms at the thick miasma of cigar and cigarette smoke. “Let’s get some fresh air. Bring our bags in so we can at least get cleaned up. Come on, up and at ’em.”
Lennie swung the door leading to the parking lot wide open and took a deep breath. “Come on, come on,” he said, and the other three followed him across the damp wooden porch. The rain had eased off and the fog had reached the shore. Bennie and Cassidy stood in the doorway enjoying the chilly damp breeze. Cassidy took a step through the doorway, then felt Bennie’s hand tightening on his arm. The cane slipped from his grasp and clattered on the floor.
“Wait,” Bennie said softly, “wait a minute …”
Like robots, several heads, then shoulders, were rising up out of the sand-blown scrub brush rimming the parking lot, rising almost in slow motion, as if they were a lost legion coming like phantoms from the sea. Their hats were pulled low against the streaky rain and mist and their trench coats were soaked through. They came without a sound, five of them ranged along the final rise of the dune.
They were carrying Thompson submachine guns.
Halfway across the lot toward the long, gleaming Lincoln Continental, beaded with rain, Chicago Willie saw them, yelled something inelegant, hey, who the fuck are these guys …
Lennie turned to look and in a blur he had his gun in his hand, had dropped flat on the ground with the automatic out in front of him, had fired once, a roar that split the morning stillness …
A puff of sand rose in front of one of the men from the sea.
Artie made a dash, like a sprinter kicking for the tape, got to the Lincoln, yanked the door open, pulled a shotgun from the front seat …
A burst from one of the tommy guns took Chicago Willie off at the knee, dropping him where he stood, screaming in a widening pool of blood. He got his gun free and another quick burst stitched his epitaph across his chest …
Marvin tried to scuttle back toward the doorway and another of the men with the tommy guns raised the muzzle …
Bennie slammed the door shut a millisecond before it was raked with slugs. Marvin let out a frightened yelp and they heard him slammed heavily onto the wooden porch, heard him battering weakly at the door, trying to get in …
Cassidy got to the window in time to see Artie pull the trigger on the shotgun and blow one of the tommy-gun men back over the lip of the scrubby dune, his gun rattling off a salvo into the gathering fog …
A large square-shaped man appeared for the first time from below the crest of the dune as if he’d waited for the opening volleys to pass and opened up on the Lincoln, ripping curling holes across the long hood, filling the fog with an explosion of glass, ripping huge gaps in the fabric top, blowing a row of holes across the door shielding Artie and his shotgun …
Chips and slivers of parking lot were flying all around the prone figure of Lennie, who fired back, having to know it was hopeless, having to know it was all over …
It had taken five or six seconds so far.
Terry stood beside Cindy, his face ashen, leaning on her chair. She had her hands over her ears.
Bennie stood stock-still by the window, the huge .45 looking like a gambler’s derringer in the massive fist …
Cassidy said, “Come on, everybody, it’s time to get the hell out of here.” He grabbed his cane, yanking Bennie away from the window just before more slugs tore into the roadhouse’s wooden siding and the window exploded back across the table.
Cassidy grabbed Cindy, pulled her upright, and headed toward the door onto the rear balcony from which they’d watched the burning ships. Terry, weaker than he’d expected, gamely followed, his face almost blue with weakness and pain. He looked at Cassidy. “It’s my back … let’s go, Jocko, I’ll make it.” Bennie followed.
Cassidy turned back, saw Marvin’s precious attaché case on the table, pushed the others ahead, dashed back in to get it. They were still firing in the parking lot. He heard Artie let fly again with the shotgun. Very soon Artie was going to be dead. Men were yelling out there. He took the case and went back out the door. The rest of them were down the steps. He limped downward, hard on his knee, and fell the last three steps. But Bennie was there to catch him.
They ran across the wet sand, angling off toward the first dune between them and the water. Each jolt was an agony for his knee and the cane was useless in the sand. He flung it away into the fog. Terry fell over a half-buried piece of driftwood, Cassidy stopped, helped him up. “Come on, beautiful,” he said.
“A day at the fucking beach,” Terry gasped.
Bennie had swept Cindy over the top of the dune and rolled down the other side with her.
Cassidy staggered onward, Terry’s arm around his neck, holding on, and then they too had crested the dune and he was lowering Terry as gently as he could.
“Put a fork in me, momma,” Terry whispered, “I’m about done. Leave me here, I’ve got a gun, Jocko. I can slow the bastards down … you go ahead.”
“No, this is all right,” Cassidy said, sinking down beside him on the wet sand. “Listen, pal, I’m not feeling too damn chipper myself.” He sat quietly, gulping air and smelling the fog which had engulfed them. He peered into the mist. Bennie and Cindy were scrambling up the slope toward them. Driftwood, wet sand, dune grass, fog blowing thickly off the water. “Let’s just dig in here and see what happens. The fog’s on our side. Hell, I don’t think these guys are after us.”
“Who are they?” Terry asked, gritting his teeth, shifting his weight, trying to ease the pain in his back.
“I don’t know …” But Cassidy had seen the last man up, the big square man who’d waited, and he’d have sworn he’d recognized him. He was almost sure. Almost.
He held on to the attaché case. Cindy huddled against him, shivering. Bennie leaned over Terry: “Are you okay?”
Terry nodded slowly, eyes shut. “Not quite up to par yet, I guess.” He laughed softly, opened his eyes, and winked at Cassidy. He reached inside his coat and came out with a .38 Special. “Here, Lew. You’d better take this. I’m weak as a cat …” Cassidy took the gun.
They sat listening to each other breathe and the rolling, lapping surf. Cindy said, “It’s stopped.” She cocked her head, brushing her hair away with a sand-covered hand. “Listen, the shooting’s stopped …”
“They’re all dead, then,” Bennie said.
As if to punctuate the gun battle there was a muffled roar, like something suddenly blowing up, a whooshing sound and a crack, then nothing.
They waited another five minutes, then Cassidy said he was going to have a look. They couldn’t sit there on the wet sand forever.
Cindy sighed. “Please be careful.”
He looked down at her, trying to convince himself that last night had really happened. She smiled tentatively. He got up and limped up over the rim of the dune and kept on going. When he looked back, the dune was gone in the fog. He was caught in the middle, plodding onward, no longer able to see where he’d been, not yet able to make out what lay ahead. For a moment he thought he smelled smoke, an oily fire. What the hell was he going to do? Was he going to start shooting people? Was he going to keep on playing footsie with Dewey and Luciano and the cops? Was he going to keep telling Max Bauman’s girl he loved her? He was wandering in the goddamn fog …
The outline of the roadhouse loomed suddenly above him. It rested on stilts sunk into concrete pilings and there were the stairs they’d descended. He leaned against one of the stilts to catch his breath and rest his knee. There were no sounds coming from above so he went to the last set of stilts. The voices finally reached him, filtering through the wind and fog. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. He held his breath, listening, trying to identify just the one. He edged closer to the corner of the building. The parking lot was above him now, the dune curving ahead of him, nothing to protect him but the fog.
Suddenly the voices came clear, just ahead, and he froze.
They were breathing heavily, slipping and sliding down the steep wall of wet sand. He waited until he’d heard them pass, heard the heavy metallic slapping of the tommy guns jostling. He edged forward again and saw the shapes of the men from behind.
They moved like ghosts in the fog.
The big square man was bringing up the rear. He could hear the crackling burning of something in the parking lot. One of the others turned, called back through the fog, “You coming? You all right?”
“No, you dumb shithead, I’m gonna stay for breakfast! ’Course I’m coming …”
The sound of a motor launch firing its engine sliced through the fog.
“Where the fuck’s the dock?” the big square man yelled, stopping, turning, trying to get his bearings.
“Over here, follow the sound of my voice …”
Then they were gone, faint sounds of the tommy-gun men clambering from the dock onto the launch.
He was right about the square man but it didn’t make things any better knowing that he’d been mowing down gangsters in the parking lot.
Harry Madrid.
Cassidy limped back across the stretch of beach, following his own tracks, climbed the dune, and there they were, Bennie standing guard, Terry and Cindy huddled halfway down the dune. Cassidy sat down beside them, keeping his leg straight before him.
Terry had recovered somewhat, though the pallor beneath his tan gave him away. He leaned on an elbow, fumbling in his coat, brought out a leather case, slid off the top to reveal three of Max’s Havanas. “I take it the danger has passed. Calls for a cigar. Bennie,” he called over his shoulder, “you want a cigar?” Bennie ambled down the dune and squatted beside them. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said. Terry cupped his hands around his lighter and waited until all three had their cigars going. Cindy leaned against Cassidy, making herself small.
“They’re gone,” Cassidy said. “Motor launch.”
“So what happened?” Terry asked. “Could you see anything?”
“Oh, yeah, I saw them …”
“So? Who was it?”
“It was Harry Madrid.”
Terry scowled. Bennie, who’d stood up and taken a few steps away, turned from his contemplation of the sea, slowly being revealed by the breaking up of the fog.
Cassidy said, “Harry Madrid just came out of nowhere to wipe out one of Johnny Rocco’s divisions, rat-tat-tat. I wonder if Max will be happy … Maybe, maybe not.
“The question is,” Cassidy persisted, “how did Harry know they’d be here? And did he know Max wasn’t coming?”
The fog had drifted away and the sun began to glow timidly behind the low-slung rain clouds. It gave a watery light, a weak yellow wash over the gray ocean.
Bennie was pointing toward the shoreline. “What’s that? Coming in with the surf?” He polished his glasses on his handkerchief and hooked them back over his ears.
Cassidy stood up, gave Terry a hand. “How’s the back?”
“It’s eased off. It’s that slug, it moves around.”
Cindy got up, holding her high heels in one hand.
Bennie had struck off down the shingle of sand, making for the water. They set out after him, stragglers from a battlefield, wandering through the wind and mist. Cindy walked in stockinged feet, leaving tiny prints.
The smell of oil was thick, the slicks from the merchant ships washing ashore, staining the cementlike sand. A couple of dogs had come from nowhere, barked angrily at the wheeling gulls above them, at the dead, blackened fish fetching up at their feet. Bits of junk began to bob up in the foaming surf and stick in the sand with the froth curling around them, sucking at them as if the sea had thought better of it and wanted to reclaim them. Footlockers, wooden slabs from lifeboats, a lifesaver riddled with bullet holes. The U-boat had surfaced to machine-gun the survivors in the water. Oil cans floated in like gravestones marking the ends of things. The stuff kept coming in waves.
It looked as if logs were coming next. Bumping one another, riding the waves among the oil drums and the blankets and shredded planking.
When they floated closer, you could see the truth.
The logs had arms and legs and faces. They were soaked in oil and blood and saltwater. Had they felt any better in the last moments, unarmed, knowing they were dying for their country?
Cindy Squires gasped and turned away. “That’s it,” she said. She set her jaw firmly, turned her back on the sea, and set off back up the beach toward the dunes.
Bennie and Terry were standing at the edge of the water, staring at the bodies washing up at their feet.
Cassidy looked down into one of the faces. The flesh was bluish white and rubbery. The eyes were still open. Water dribbled at the corner of the man’s mouth. One side of the face was burned and raw and white, all the blood drained away from the wound. Cassidy turned away to keep from vomiting.
He’d counted six corpses already. It was a hell of a show, all right, but probably nothing more than just another day for the guys overseas, island-hopping in the Pacific. The rain had coarsened again and was dripping slowly off the brim of his hat.
Bennie and Terry had moved on. He watched them, wondering when they’d have had enough. He was just about to turn back and go find Cindy Squires when it happened.
A disproportionately large lump of body, like a prehistoric sea creature, crested a wave and came flopping onto the sand. It was blackened with oil, like the others. Terry walked toward it. The gulls were gathering, screeching, at the dogs, trying to get at the dead fish. The dogs howled, dashed at them.
Terry stopped abruptly, looked back for Bennie, then moved closer to the monstrous body.
He bent down, hands on knees, staring into the face. Then he stood up, looked out at the ocean and the diving gulls.
Then he went. He just toppled over. Crumpling.
Bennie plucked him out of the air as if he were a tumbling leaf. He never hit the wet sand. Bennie held him in his arms like a child.
Cassidy got to them as quickly as he could.
Bennie pursed his lips, said from a great height, “He swooned, Cassidy. You saw him.” He might have been speaking of a maiden lady in Barchester Towers.
Cassidy looked down at the oversize mound sprawled indelicately on the sand.
It wasn’t a man.
It was two men. They were roped together. A good part of each head was gone. And they weren’t sailors. It didn’t make any sense. But, of course, it had made some kind of sense to someone.
They’d been shot in the head, tied into one large bundle, and dumped somewhere offshore. As he watched the bodies rocking in the foaming eddies a tiny, nervous-looking sand crab crawled timidly from the larger corpse’s slack mouth.
Cassidy felt his stomach dropping down an elevator shaft.
He knew both of them.
Markie Cookson and his little blond lad.
With the sailors at last.