Hot Springs (3 page)

He raced from chamber to chamber, pausing to change magazines on the hot thing in his hands. Odd gun: the mag locked in top, not on the bottom where it would make some sense. It was no BAR; only guys who dreamed up samurai swords and kamikaze planes and human-wave attacks would have cooked up such a silly, junky thing. It even looked slant-eyed. But it worked, always.

In the last room, they waited for him with the predator’s eerie calmness. They were out of ammo. He didn’t care. They didn’t care. What happened they expected, as did he. They faced him; one had a sword out and high, but no room to maneuver in what amounted to a sewer tunnel, illuminated by a gun slit. He sprayed them with light and they danced as their own 6.5s tore through them. When they were down, he changed magazines, sprayed them again, unleashing the lightning. Then he threw the hot little machine gun away.

Earl looked at what he had wrought: a massacre. It was too easy. The Japs were committed elsewhere, their eardrums blown out by the shelling, and the gunfire, their sense of duty absolute. He merely executed them in a sleet of fiery light. He heard a moan from the last chamber and thought: one is alive. But then he heard a clank, meaning that a grenade had been primed, so out he spilled, maybe a tenth of a second before the detonation which shredded the last of the wounded.

He returned to the surface, clambering for breath. Men from his platoon had made it up Charlie-Dog now that the blockhouse guns were silenced, but if they spoke to him, he didn’t hear, for his ears too were temporarily ruined by the ringing.

“Burn it out,” he screamed.

One of the flamethrower teams disinfected the blockhouse with a cleansing two-thousand-degree ray of pure heat; the radiance drove them all back.

The captain was saying, Goddamn he never saw nothing like it, except the captain was from something called Yale and so what he said in that odd little-girl voice of his was “I don’t believe I have ever seen a more splendid example of field-expedient aggression.” Or something like that.

Earl and his bottle took one more dance. It hit him again, and drove the thoughts out of his head, but then the thoughts came back again.

What was bothersome was the faces. They were vanishing. In one melancholy afternoon in the hospital on Guam after the bad wound on Iwo, he’d done the arithmetic, learned its savage truth.

He had been a sergeant in the Second Marines, then a platoon sergeant also in the Second, and the company gunny sergeant in the Second. When the new Fifth Marine Division was organized in September 1944, he’d been assigned to its 28th Regiment and promoted to first sergeant of Able Company. He had a total of 418 young Marines under him and had been directly responsible to three lieutenants, a captain and finally a major. Of those, 229 had been killed outright. The rest had been wounded, including himself, seven times, three times savagely. None of the officers survived. Of his NCO friends with whom he served at the Marine Detachment in Panama on December 7,1941, he was the only survivor. Of the company professionals, including officers, from that day, he was the only survivor. Of his first platoon in the Second Marines, on Guadalcanal, he was one of ten survivors; of his company that went into the water off Tarawa, 232 men, he was one of thirty-three survivors; of his company of 216 men that hit the black-ash beach at Iwo, he was one of 111 survivors, but he had no idea how many of them had been wounded seriously. On Tinian and Saipan the numbers were a little better, but only by the standards of the Pacific war.

He knew he should not be alive, not by any law of math, and that the medals he had been awarded were much more for the brute violation of the numbers than for any kind of heroism. Manila John Basilone, the bravest man he ever knew, won the Medal of Honor on a ridge on the ‘Canal, stopping a Jap attack with a .30 water-cooled and a fighting spirit and nothing else; he made a bond tour, became a celebrity, married a pretty gal, and was blown to pieces in the black ash of Iwo that first day.

Across from the bar Earl saw himself in a mirror, his eyes black as the black in floodwaters as they rise and there’s no high ground left. His cheeks were drawn, and his gray lips muttered madly. He swallowed, blinked, and opened his eyes to see himself again. He saw an empty man, a man so tired and lost he hardly was worth the oxygen he consumed, or the bourbon he drank.

He felt so unworthy.

You ain’t no damned goody his father’s voice reached him, and he was in agreement with the old man.

I ain’t no damned good. Any one of those men was better than me. Why in hell ain’t I with them?

Earl took another whack on the bourbon, finished it, looked at his watch. His vision was so blurry he couldn’t read it, but given the amount of alcohol he’d drunk, he’d probably missed the train back to Fort Smith, and there’d be all kinds of hell to pay.

He stood up uncertainly, and walked across the bar, and found the men’s room. He went in, pulled the door shut, locked the door, took a leak, took out his .45 and thumbed back the hammer.

At no time in the war did he feel as disconsolate as he did now. It wasn’t right that he was alive and so many others were dead, and that he had a medal in his pocket that certified him as a HE-RO and they had nothing but white crosses on islands no one would ever visit and would soon forget.

He put the pistol to his temple, felt its pressure, circular. His finger touched the trigger, then pressed it.

The gun didn’t fire.

It shivered as it snapped, the small vibration of a hammer falling on a firing pin that leaped forward to strike nothingness. He looked at it, then slipped the slide back a notch, saw that the chamber was empty. He removed the magazine, and found six .45 cartridges, but someone had very carefully taken out the mag and ejected the chambered shell, then replaced the mag. He knew he’d loaded it that morning.

Did she do it? She didn’t know nothing about guns. Who did it? Maybe he forgot to chamber it? What the hell was going on?

He reloaded, this time threw the slide to fill the chamber and cock it, ease the hammer back to its seating.

He stuffed the gun back in his belt, drew his tunic tight, and unlocked the door.

The lobby of the Carlton Hotel was bright and full of swirling beauty. The light seemed to dance, as if the walls were made of glass. Maybe the VJ Day party was still going on. It was full of pretty young women and their swains, all of them so excited about television and jet planes they could hardly stand it.

Earl slipped through the revelers; everyone was in a tuxedo or a formal gown and gay young things rushed this way and that, hungry for tomorrow to get here.

The boys all were shaven and looked soft; he knew he shouldn’t hate them, but he did, and he let that hatred bore through his blur and he felt he needed another drink. Not a fifth of bourbon, but just something to make the pain in his head go away, like a whiskey sour or a gin and tonic or a mint julep. He glanced at his Hamilton and discovered to his relief that he hadn’t missed the train; it wasn’t yet 7:00. He had time for—

“Sergeant Swagger?”

He turned.

Two men stood beside him. One was a handsome, polished charmer, with a gloss of black hair and movie star teeth, somewhere in his thirties. The other was much older, a gloomy bag of a man, with a sad leathery face and a slow way of moving. He had long arms that his suit only partially disguised and the most gigantic hands Earl had ever seen on a man. His fedora was pushed back carelessly, and his white shirt was gray and spotted. But his eyes were so wary and quick they made Earl think of Howlin’ Mad Smith’s, or some other old, combat-hard Marine. Earl saw a strap across his chest, under the tie, that indicated the presence of a shoulder holster and from the strain it showed, he knew it carried a big gun.

“Sergeant Swagger,” said the first, in tones that Earl then related to his native state, “we’ve been waiting here for you. Your wife is upstairs packing. She said you’d be along directly.”

“What is all this, sir?” said Earl.

“Sergeant Swagger, we’ve come to discuss a job.”

“A job? I got a job. I work in a goddamned sawmill.”

“No, a job in law enforcement.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Fred C. Becker and a week ago I won a special election as prosecuting attorney for Garland County, Arkansas.”

“Hot Springs?” said Earl. “Now what would you want with me?”

“Hot Springs is the wildest town in America. We have gamblers, we have gunmen, we have whores, we have more crooks than you can shake a stick at and many of them are wearing uniforms and carrying guns. All run by New York mobsters. Well, sir, I’m going to clean up Sodom and Gomorrah and I’m looking for a good man. Everyone I talk to says you’re the best.”

The city’s tallest skyscraper was a spire of art deco, byzantine, glamorous, bespeaking the decadent pleasures of an empire. And from the apartment on the top floor, the empire was ruled.

“It’s very New York, eh? I mean, really, one must agree. It’s very New York,” our proud host said to his number-one guest.

“You can say that again,” said the guest.

They were quite a pair. One, with the English accent, was in his mid-fifties, five foot ten, solid beef, with a handsome swarthy face. That was our host. He wore an elegantly fitted white dinner jacket, with a rose cummerbund. It fit him like a coating of thick cream poured by a delighted milkmaid. A carnation sparkled in his lapel. His hair was slicked back, and he smoked a cigarette in a holder. He wore a dapper little mustache, just a smudge of one, to suggest not merely masculinity but a certain savoir faire in affairs of business and, as well, the heart. In his other hand, he held a thin-stemmed martini glass. Onyx cuff links gleamed from his cuffs.

“Me,” said the other, “now I’m not saying nothing against this, you understand. It’s beautiful. It’s very beautiful. But I’m a homier guy. I got a place that’s what they call Tudor. It looks like a king from your country could have lived there.”

“Yes, old man. I know the style. Quite appropriate, I would say. It’s actually named for a king’s family.”

“Yeah,” said the guest, “that’s me all the way. A real fucking king.” He smiled, showing a blast of white teeth.

He was ruddier. He glowed with animal vitality. He wore expertly fitted clothes too, but of a sportier nature, a creamy linen sport coat over a crisp blue oxford shirt, open at the collar. He wore mohair slacks and dazzlingly white bucks. An ascot, a little burst of burgundy silk, completed the ensemble, and in his strong fingers, he clutched a fine Cubano.

“But this is okay,” he said again. “It’s real swank.” He was shorter, more muscular, tanner, more athletic. He had big hands, wide shoulders, a linebacker’s pug body. His eyes were especially vivid, as he gobbled the room up. He was not stupid, but he was not really smart either.

“Do you know who did it?” asked his host.

“Did it?”

“The decor. You hire a decorator. You just don’t do it yourself. One could never come close.”

“Oh,” said the sport. “Yeah, a decorator.”

“Donald Deskey. The same fellow who did the interiors at Radio City Music Hall. Hence, the wood, the high gloss, the art moderne, the streamline. Why, Cole Porter would be comfortable here.”

He gestured with his cigarette holder, and his apartment gleamed before him, cherrywood walls dusky in the glow of muted golden lighting from torcheres and sconces, black-lacquered furniture supported by struts of gleaming metal that could have been pried off the 20th Century Limited. Silk-brocaded drapes billowed in the breeze from die terrace door, and outside the lights of the city sparkled, infinitely tempting.

In the corner of the cherrywood cathedral, a small band played, and a Negro singer with marcelled hair crooned into a microphone. It was up-tempo, smooth as silk, very seductive, about the glories of Route 66 that you’d encounter on the way to Californi-ay. Next to them, another Negro served drinks, martinis mostly, but the odd bourbon or Scotch, to a fast, glamorous crowd. The movie star Dick Powell was there, a craggily handsome head mounted upon a spindly body, a man who beamed beauty and good feeling, and his truly beautiful wife, a woman so unusually comely that in any normal room she would stop traffic. But not this room. Powell’s screen girlfriend June Allyson stood off to a side, a small woman, almost perfectly configured but seeming more like a kewpie doll, with her fetching freckles and her spray of blond hair and her crinkly blue eyes.

The other specimens were not so perfect. One was the writer John P. Marquand, surrounded by some admiring fans, all of them exquisitely turned out. Another was the football star Bob Waterford, a gigantically muscular man with a thick mane of hair. He was so big he looked as though he could play without pads. Walter Winchell was expected later. Mickey Rooney was also rumored to be planning an appearance, although with the Mick, one could never be too sure. The Mick burned legendarily hard at both ends of the candle, and he kept to his own schedule. That was the Mick. Then there were the usual assorted politicos, gambling figures and their well-turned-out, even high-bred women.

But the center of attention was another beautiful woman. Her shoulders, pale in the golden light, yielded to the hint of breasts so soft and pillowy that an army could find comfort there, and were cupped as if for display by the precision of her gown, just at the crucial point, where there was but a gossamer of material between her nipples and the rest of the world. She had almost no waist at all, a tiny, insect’s thing. Her ample hips were rounded and her buttocks especially firm. The red taffeta evening gown she wore showed all this off, but it was cut to reveal a hint of her shapely legs, made muscular and taut by the extreme rake of her high heels. Her face, however, was the main attraction: it was smart, but not intellectual, say rather cunning. Her features were delicate, except for that vulgar, big, luscious mouth. Her eyes were blue, her skin so pale and creamy it made everyone ache and her hair genuine auburn, like fire from a forbidden dream, a rapture of hair.

“Hi, babe,” called the Sporty Guest from across the room, for she was with him.