Hot Springs (38 page)

Then, for the week of January 17 through January 24, “Elements of 2nd Marines in transit to West Coast”; it continued until early February.

“They were on the move for three weeks?” asked Carlo.

“Son, a Marine regiment is part of a division, which is a formidable amount of men. We’re talking about a headquarters element, three infantry regiments of about 3,100 men each, an artillery regiment, an engineer regiment, a tank battalion, a special weapons battalion, a service battalion, a medical battalion and an amphibious tractor battalion. They were understrength, of course, but a division carried a paper strength of 19,514 men. So we’re calking about a unit that’s folded into a larger unit of at least twelve to thirteen thousand men. Plus all the vehicles and equipment, including the guns. It all has to work together. It’s no small thing.”

Carlo sat there. A worm began to gnaw at his brain. He rubbed his hand against his eye but it would not go away.

“I’m trying to envision this.”

“Envision chaos. Barely organized, confusing, messed up, full of mistakes. You’re moving a large body of men and equipment. It’s 1942, the war has just begun. Everybody’s in a panic, nobody knows what’s going to happen next. You’re working on a railroad system that’s just been converted to troop-carrying duties. It demands coordinating with the railways, assembling trains, picking routes, routing the trains in and around other military traffic and civilian traffic, the coming of blackouts, the beginning of wartime regulation and austerity. The logistics are a nightmare. It’s a mess, and none of the officers or NCOs have any real experience in it. Up till then the Marine Corps has pretty much moved only at the battalion level. Now you’re moving in units of 12,000 men.”

Carlo nodded, let it sink in.

“I take it you were there.”

“In 1942 at that time I was a staff sergeant in the First Marines. We were also at New River but we didn’t move west until July. Our baptism of fire came later, at Bougainville. It would help if I knew what this was about.”

“It’s a security clearance and a problem has come up. I’m trying to account for a sergeant’s location in the third week of January. I already know he wasn’t UA or on temporary duty or leave. He was officially with the regiment at that time.”

“That should settle it, then.”

“What were the routes taken west, do you recall?”

“Ah, there were many trains, many routes, depending. Since we were staging for the Pacific at Pendleton, outside of Diego, we usually went a southern route. Let’s see. In my case, the train went from New River through Nashville, down to Little Rock, on to Tulsa, down through New Mexico and Albuquerque. We were hung up at Albuquerque a week due to a coal shortage, and then on into Diego.”

Little Rock!

“Goddamn!”

Goddamn!

It was the first time in his life of virtue and service that he could remember swearing.

“You look like I just hit you between the eyes with a poleax, son.”

“Let me ask you this. Is this theoretically possible? A guy has been in ten years. He’s a sergeant. He’s been around, in China, Nicaragua and the Zone. He’s well-liked, even beloved. He knows all the other sergeants and all the junior officers and they know he really can do his job well. Now his unit is moving west by train, in that huge mess you described earlier. At some place— say, Little Rock—he jumps the train. He’s from Arkansas, he has some family business to attend to before he goes to war. It takes him about a week, maybe less. He gets it done, heads back to Little Rock. Sooner or later another train bearing Marines comes through. He puts his uniform back on so he can mingle with them easily enough, and maybe he knows some of them and they know who he is. So he gets out to San Diego a week late. It’s not that no one has noticed, it’s just that they know this guy will be back, and when he quietly shows up one day, that’s that. Nothing is said about it. I know it’s against regulations, but this is a combat guy the best, no one wants to give him any trouble, it’s a sergeant kind of thing, something sergeants would let other sergeants get away with. Is that possible? Could that happen?”

“Theoretically, no. We do take attendance in the Marine Corps every morning at muster. But…”

“Everyone knows that when they go up against the Japs, this is the guy they want around in a big way. He’s got leader and hero written all over him in letters a foot tall. And he’s probably going to die in the Pacific. Guys like him don’t come back from wars, unless it’s by some wild statistical improbability.”

“The truth is, what you describe, is it possible? Son, it’s more than possible. It probably happened a lot. When we shipped out, we knew we weren’t coming back. I did it myself.”

He looked like a kid in a movie, one of those things with Dick Powell where everybody sang in a real trilly voice, and the women’s hair was all marcelled and they wore diaphanous gowns. They didn’t make movies like that anymore, but that’s what the kid looked like.

“You’re kind of young for this shit, aren’t you, kid?” asked Owney.

Frenchy sat in an office inside the corrugated tin of the Maddox warehouse way out on the west side of town. He’d been cooling his heels with a mob of surly Grumleys who looked as if they’d just as soon eat him raw as oblige him by letting him live. They yakked at each other in Arkansas hill accents so dense and four-teenth-century, even accent-master Frenchy couldn’t quite figure them out. They also spit a lot, the one thing about this godforsaken part of the country he could never get used to.

He wore gray flannels, a blue blazer with the Princeton crest, blue Brooks shirt, a yellow ascot and saddle shoes. And why not? What else would a man wear for such a ceremonial event? Overalls? He’d secredy swom never to wear overalls again. That store-bought suit he had worn every day as one of Earl Swagger’s boy commandos? That thing should be burned.

“I’m twenty,” he said. “I have very smooth skin, which makes me look younger. My mother says it makes me look like a girl. Do you think it makes me look like a girl?”

“Is this some kind of fucking joke? Are they tryin’ to pull my leg?”

“My, nasty, aren’t we? They said you liked to pretend to upper-class manners but were really pretty crude underneath. I guess they were right.”

“He’s got you there, boyo,” said Owney’s companion, an Irish movie star who looked too much like Dennis Morgan for anybody’s good.

“Sir, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” said Frenchy.

“You know who I am, kid.”

“I’m Walter Short, ofWilliamsport, Pennsylvania. You can call me Frenchy, all my friends did, that is, back when I had friends, and even that wasn’t for very long. And you would be—?”

“Ain’t he but a charmer, Owney,” said the Irishman. “Aye, he’s a lad, I can tell. It ain’t no joke to this one. He’s got the look of a gendeman schemer to him, I can see it on him. It’s a Brit thing. They love to look you in the eye and go all twinkly on you before they pull the bloody trigger.”

“Never you fucking mind who he is,” said Owney to Frenchy. “You sing, buster, or you won’t be a happy kid much longer. You convince me you got the goods.”

“Sure. Let’s see: the leader of the outfit is a famous ex-FBI agent named D. A. Parker, one of the old-time gunfighters of the ‘30s. Killed a lot of bandits, they say.”

“Parker!” said Owney. “D. A. Parker! Who’s the goddamned cowboy?”

“His name is Earl Swagger. He’s more a Marine sergeant than a police officer. Lots of combat experience in the Pacific. Won some big medals. Unbelievably brave guy. Scary as hell. You don’t want him mad at you. Oh, yes, you already know that. He is mad at you.”

He smiled.

“Earl and D. A. really are splendid men. You’d never stop them with those hillbillies you’ve got changing tires in the garage. If that’s the best you’ve got, I’d suggest a career change.”

“Cut the crap, wise guy. Keep talking.”

“I’ll tell you so much for free,” said Frenchy. “You go check it out while I go out and get some dinner. Then, tonight, I’ll tell you what I want from you. When I’m convinced you can give it to me, then I’ll give you what you want.”

“Son, Mr. Owney here could have his boys squeeze it out of your high fanciness in a few minutes of dark, sweaty work, you know.”

“The funny thing is, he couldn’t. He could beat me for a year and I’d never tell. I know what I’m doing and I know how the game is played. You don’t scare me.”

“Look at the balls on that one, Owney,” said the Irishman, amused. “Lord, if I don’t think he’s telling some kind of truth. He don’t always tell the truth, but this time he is. And he’d take what you give him, Owney. He’s a smart one, and he’s willing to risk it all to win what he wants. Give the little pecker that.”

“Kid,” said Owney, who had a nose for such deceits, “why? Why you doing this?”

This was the only time in the long night that Frenchy showed even a bit of emotion under his bravado. He swallowed, and if you looked carefully, you might see a brief, ashamed, furious well of tears in his bright eyes.

But then he blinked and it was gone.

“He should have done more for me. They all should have done more for me. I got a letter. A fucking letter.”

And then Frenchy told them everything he could about the raid team except where it could be found and where it would strike next.

Once the original breakthrough had been made, it didn’t take long. Owney called F. Garry Hurst with the names Earl Swagger and D. A. Parker. Garry Hurst called associates in Little Rock and within three hours Owney had in his hands files, complete with photographs, that verified against Owney’s own memory and the testimony of the two managers who’d seen them the identity of his two antagonists. The picture of D. A. came from a 1936 issue of Life magazine, called “The Fastest Man Alive,” in which then FBI agent D. A. Parker drew against a time-lapse camera with a timer and was clocked at a move from leather to first shot in two tenths of a second. Among the pictures, one showed the then much younger man holding a tommy gun and looking proud at the final disposition of the Ma Barker gang in Florida. Another revealed that he’d been a member of the team that had brought down Charlie “Pretty Boy” Floyd in Ohio. In a last picture, the man stood tall and lean and heroic as the great J. Edgar Hoover pinned the Bureau’s highest award for valor on his chest. In a few years, fearing that he was growing too famous, Hoover would fire him, as he fired the great Melvin Purvis.

The Swagger picture appeared in the Arkansas Democrat Times: the Marine, ramrod-straight, in his dress uniform, as the president of the United States put a garland of ribbon and amulet around his neck, the Medal of Honor. Once it would have been the biggest news; by the time of the photo, July of 1946, that is, three months ago, just before all this began, it had only played on an inside page.

“Fuckin’ Bugsy didn’t know what he was up against,” said Owney. “That guy’s a war machine. Bugsy’s lucky he didn’t get himself killed. And I am unlucky he didn’t kill Bugsy for me.”

“And Earl Swagger is unlucky,” said Johnny Spanish. “If we don’t kill the poor boyo, then sure as Jesus Bugsy will.”

Frenchy was back from dinner, looking extremely pleased with himself. The two men awaited him in the upstairs office, but all the Grumleys had been sent home. Only one lurked outside, with a pump shotgun, and he stepped aside for Frenchy.

Frenchy’s mood was peculiar: he had no doubts, no qualms, and he felt, at least superficially, good, even well. But he was aware that he’d crossed some kind of divide and that it really was tricky on this side. He needed to maneuver very carefully here, and keep his goal in mind, and not get hung up. He had to get out of here with something other than just his skin: he had to get something positive, something that would take him where he wanted to go.

At the same time, though he didn’t feel it, a pain lurked somewhere. It left traces, like tracks in the snow, as now and then odd images floated up out of nowhere to assail him: how Earl had saved his life when he fell forward into Carlo’s line of fire during the training, the rage he felt when he wasn’t named first man on the entry team, the oddest sense of happiness and belonging he’d begun to enjoy on the raid team. It was so strange.

This time, Owney was more respectful and less suspicious. He seemed like a colleague. He sat at the desk smoking a cigar and the Irishman sat at his side. Frenchy could see a Life magazine article with D. A.’s picture in it and a newspaper clipping of Earl. Drinks were offered, twelve-year-old Scotch whiskey. Frenchy took a cigar and lit it up.

“It checks out, old man,” said Owney, who had suddenly transformed himself into a stage Englishman. “But the problem, my new friend, is that it’s not enough. Most important: where are they? Second most important: how can we get at them?”

“Oh, I’ve got that all figured out,” s*rid Frenchy, taking a big draft on the cigar, then chasing it with just a touch of the old, mellow Scotch. “I’ve designed something that’s really sharp. I mean, really sharp.” He raised his eyebrows to emphasize the point.

“Hadn’t you best ask the lad his price, Owney?” asked the wise Irishman. “If it’s cream he’s givin’ you, it’s cream he’ll want in return.”

“What do you want, old man? Money? Filthy lucre? Judas got his thirty pieces, how many pieces do you want?”

“Money?” said Frenchy. “You’re making me laugh, Mr. Maddox. You have me confused with a greedy little schemer who wants to buy a new Ford coupe. I am beyond money.”

“That makes him truly dangerous,” said the Irishman. “He’s bloody Michael Collins.”

Frenchy leaned forward.

“I’ve done my homework. I know how big you were in NewYork.”

“True enough, Owney was the tops,” said the Irishman.

“You still know people back there. I mean, big people. Judges, attorneys, bankers. You know them or you know people who know them. People with influence.”

Frenchy’s blazing ambition filled the room. Or was it his despair or his courage? Whatever, it was almost a little frightening. He leaned forward even further, fixing the two of them with eyes so hot they unsettled. The two gangsters felt the power of his will and his inability to accept that he couldn’t get what he wanted.