The Hunt aka 27 (12 page)

“That’s most kind of you, sir. Thank you.” Reinhardt turned to Wallingford. “Perhaps the Black Lily?” he asked.

“What’s the Black Lily?” Keegan asked.

“You don’t want to be involved,” Wallingford said, “so stay out of it completely.”

“Fair enough,” Keegan nodded, and left the room.

When he got back downstairs, the actress was gone. The little man with the hump on his back w
a
s still there, though, and he watched Keegan’s every step as Keegan left the embassy.

In Der Schwarze Stier Verein, Berlin’s most notorious nightclub, nobody paid any attention to Francis Keegan. The downstairs room was nothing more than an elaborate beer hall, a mob scene, crowded, smoky and boisterous, the heat oppressive. Keegan decided he would stay long enough to have a nightcap and hear the singer.

As he weaved through the crowd toward the bar, the manager, Herman Braff, pushed his way through the dancers toward him.

“What an honor, what an honor,” the chubby little sycophant babbled. “I am always flattered when you come, Herr Keegan.” Herman’s tuxedo was a disaster of wrinkles and sweat stains and his shirt was soaked down the front. Rivulets of perspiration dribbled down his face which he dabbed constantly with a handkerchief.

“Looks like a great night for you, Herman,” Keegan said.

“Lots of beautiful ladies.” Braff winked. “Just your type.”

“How about the new singer?”

“Nein, nein, nein.”
Herman shook his head vigorously, waving off the idea with his hand. “Not your type at all.”

“I came to hear her sing, Herman, not to propose.”

The German laughed. “Not to propose, that’s a good one,” he said. “Your type is
.

He put his two hands out in front of his chest as though he were carrying a large bundle, then rolling one hand across his buttocks in an imaginary parabola.

“Wonderful, Herman, you should be up there on the stage doing impressions.”

Keegan shook his head sadly at the grinning manager and looked around the packed club. Smoke clouded the ceiling, the
odor of stale beer was overpowering and the band was loud, dominated by the tuba and drums. There were young couples at most of the tables, some dressed in
b
rown uniforms with swastikas on the arm, most of them thick-necked, blond and garrulous. Stag men stood two and three ‘deep at the bar. The chorus line was dancing furiously on stage as though trying to finish their number as quickly as possible.
O
n the packed dance floor, couples undulated, mauled each other and ignored the stage show.

“How about those two in the corner booth?” Herman pressed on, nudging Keegan’s arms with his elbow. It was important to Herman to impress Keegan for Keegan was a trendsetter. If he liked a place, he would draw others to it, expatriates who spent their American dollars and English pounds freely. “They are Americans. And they’re with two boys. College students I would guess. They look bored.”

“I came to Europe to escape Americans,” Keegan said, squinting his eyes and peering through the swirling haze toward the corner, studying the two women as best he could. Both were brunettes, stunning, perfectly coiffed and dressed to the teeth. One, in a shiny, glittering short formal, her black hair cut in a pageboy, looked absolutely defiant, as if challenging every man in the room to try and pick her up. There
w
as something about her, something familiar. Perhaps he had seen her photograph in the rotos. Perhaps she was an actress. The lack of visibility in the room prevented any real scrutiny.

Vanessa Bromley and Deenie Brookstone were ready to ditch the two American boys who had brought them to the club. Vanessa had tired quickly of their stupid college talk and undergraduate mentality. After all, she had come to Berlin not as a sightseer, but, as she put it, “to raise almighty hell,” which definitely did not include being squired by two Dartmouth boys who knew her parents.

“I didn’t come over here to end up with the same ninnies we left behind,” she said.

Now the boys had sealed their fate by refusing to take them upstairs, to the private club called Das Goldene Tor where the nightclub act was supposedly more shocking than the one at the Crazy Horse in Paris.

“They’re naked all over,” Deenie had whispered earlier in the seclusion of their suite. “Men
and
women.”

“Why are you whispering?” Vanessa asked.

“I don’t know,” Deenie answered, still whispering. “It’s just so
. . .
scandalous.”

“Only if we’re seen. I’m sure nobody from Boston would be caught dead there.”

“I’m real nervous.”

“Will you stop
whispering.”

“I can’t help it.”

Now the two absolute juveniles were preventing them from learning firsthand just how depraved the show really was.

“They’re both virgins,” Vanessa said with disgust, watching them thread through the crowd toward the men’s room. “You can just tell.”

“So am I,” Deenie said weakly.

“Don’t be silly!”

“I am.”

“Deenie, you’re nineteen years old. How come we’ve never talked about this before?”

“I don’t know. It just never came up. How long.
. .
when did you

“Christmas holiday last year.”

“Who
. . .

“Donny Ebersole.”

“Donny Ebersole!”

“What’s the matter with Donny Ebersole?”

“Donny Ebersole. He’s
. . .
so.
. .
little.
He’s not as tall as you are.”

“Size has nothing to do with it,” Vanessa snapped back.

“Was it
. . .
fun?”

“Not the first time.”

“You did it more than
once?”

“Well, once you start what’s the difference? I mean, we just did it all the way through the holiday, Deenie. And yes, it was a lot of fun.”

“I just always figured I’d wait until I got married.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Deenie, grow up! This is 1933.” She thought for a moment, then added, “Maybe we ought to leave. Take a cab around town for a while, then come back.”

“Will they let us in upstairs without escorts?”

“Oh, who knows?” Vanessa said, obviously getting annoyed by Deenie’s constant blathering.

They were both aware that most of the men at the bar were staring at them, and why not? They were both gorgeous women and Vanessa was wearing what she called her “shimmy” dress, a white, form-fitting number, covered with rhinestones, that ended above the knee. She glittered like a handful of polished diamonds and when she walked the shimmering garment turned every step into an invitation. A rhinestone tiara topped off the package. Va
n
essa suddenly felt oppressed by the crowded room.

“I am not going to waste this evening
o
n these two jerks,” she said. “Come on, let’s leave and come back a little later. Maybe they’ll get the idea and leave.”

“What if they don’t?”

“We’ll snub them when we come back.”

“Vanessa!”

“Deenie, will you kindly please just
gr
o
w
up

“At least we should wait until they come back. That’s the right thing to do.”

“Deenie, if you keep doing the right thing all your life, you’re going to be a virgin when you’re fifty.”

At the bar, Keegan waited impatiently for the chorus to finish its work. A voice behind him said, “Francis?” He turned to find Bert Rudman, a reporter for the
Herald Trib
u
ne,
standing behind him. Rudman was one of their better-known correspondents, a good writer relegated at first to personality pieces, lately spending more time on European politics. They had known each other briefly in France during the war and had renewed their friendship during the year Keegan had been in Europe, bumping into each other all over the continent. A pretty boy who looked ten years younger than the thirty-five he claimed to be, Rudman was wearing a leather trenchcoat with the collar turned up and a brown fedora.

“I thought that was you,” Rudman said. “Haven’t seen you since that terrible bash in Rome.”

“The Italians throw the worst parties in Europe.”

“No, the Russians throw the worst parties in Europe.”

“The Russians don’t throw parties at all, Bert. It’s against the law to enjoy yourself in Russia.”

“Speaking of parties, are you going down to Bavaria for the Runstedts’ boar hunt this weekend?”

“My horse is running at Longchamp. I’ll be in Paris.”

“He’s been doing well,” Rudman said. “I’ve been following him.”

“I’ve made a little money on him
this
season. If he shows anything in Paris, I might try him out in the States.”

“You mean you’d actually go home?” Rudman was surprised. He had heard all the rumors about Keegan. Some, like the bootlegger story, he believed simply because he had met Keegan in an army hospital on the Western Front when the kid was barely eighteen and stone broke. Now he was a millionaire. It had to come from someplace. The fact that he thought his friend was an ex-gangster only made Keegan’s friendship more alluring. But Rudman feared if he pried too deeply into Keegan’s personal life it would damage their Friendship. Keegan was aware of Rudman’s caution and while he would never have held it against the newspaperman if he did pry a little, he let Rudman think it would.

“Just long enough to run him at Belmont and Saratoga,” said Keegan. “See how he shows up. I’ve got a little filly coming along who’ll wear him out in another two years. What brings you to Berlin, anyway?”

“Three guesses,” the reporter answered, looking around the room at the swastikas. He leaned forward and spoke directly into Keegan’s ear. “My editor in Paris thinks World War Two is going to start here sometime in the next five
minutes
.”

“Here in this saloon?”

“In Berlin, schmuck.”

“Incidentally, you ought to get rid
of
that coat, everybody’ll think you’re with the
Schutzstaffel.”

“That’s very funny, Francis. This coat cost me a month’s salary.”

“You wuz robbed.”

Rudman looked hurt. “It’s the latest fashion,” he said.

“Yeah, if you’re in the SS.”

“You can be a real bastard when you want to be.”

“Ah, don’t be so thin-skinned.” Keegan laughed. “You look beautiful. Did you take the train in?”

“No, I drove from Paris. I thought about you, kiddo. Went right through the park at Belleau Wood. That hospital where we met is a big cow barn now.”

After fourteen years, Keegan remembered that day very well. The war was over for Keegan but it was the first time he had understood what was going on. It was Bert Rudman who had finally put it all in perspective for him.

By the spring of 1917, a whipped Woodrow Wilson, reelected as a liberal idealist with a clear vision for the future o
f
the country, had watched his own rigid policies lead the country into
arch conservatism
. He was finally forced to admit the inevitable: They were on the verge of war. After a passionate speech in which he urged the Congress to declare war on Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire to save the world ‘for Democracy,
“
he returned to his
of
f
ice
in the White House with the cheers of the senators and
representa
ti
ves
still clamoring in his ears.

His secretary was shocked by his appearance. He looked worn out, defeated, old and sick.

“Are you all right?” she asked with alarm.

He shook his head sadly and dropped heavily into his chair.

“My message today was a message of
death
for our young men, “he said. “How strange it seems to applaud that.” Then lowering his head to his desk, he wept.

His message started a wave of patriotism in the country. Hamburgers became Salisbury steaks; sauerkraut was “liberty cabbage. “Germans quietly slipped to the courthouse and changed their names. Conscientious objectors were beaten up and thrown in jail. Either you were for the war or you were a traitor, and thousands of young Americans were inspired to take up the fight. Keegan was one of them. Only eighteen, he joined the Marines and six months later he was in the first Marine battalion to land in France.

Jocko Nayles, a tough
street fighter
from Brooklyn, only three years Keegan ‘s senior, took Keegan in tow on the
b
oat ride to France.

“How old’re ye?” he asked.

“Eighteen,” Keegan answered, trying to sound tough.

“Eighteen, then!
Jesus, Mary and
Joseph. Well, ye just stick with me, kid, I’ll get you through this.”

Together they had marched down muddy French roads toward the Marne River where they were baptized in fire,
w
here Keegan had seen his first German and killed his first man. The
mea
n
ing
of these skirmishes was lost in the terror of hand-to-hand combat, of s
k
y bombs showering shards of metal down on him from overhead, of the flashes of shells that temporarily blinded him, and of the mines underfoot. In horror, he saw his buddies struck down in rows like grass before a scythe
a
nd
finally
f
e
lt the burning punch in his shoulder, felt his knees give out,
and
he fell, not knowing how badly he was hit or whether he would live or die.

To Keegan, the war was five hundred yards long and a hundred yards wide and scattered with helmets and weapons and body parts. He could not relate to anything beyond his field of vision. Whether they were winning or losing, why they were there, were questions that did not even occur to him.

When the battle was over, Jocko had come back and found him huddled in a shell hole, a dirty handkerchief stuffed in the bullet hole in his shoulder, had picked him up and carried him back to the field hospital, had nursed over him for days until his f
ev
er
b
roke and
infe
c
tion
passed.

A month later he was back with his unit,
w
allow
i
ng through the mire on the outskirts of a French town called Château-Thierry, headed for the Marne River only seventy miles from Paris.

To Keegan, the length of -the French
and
German border was one great muddy battlefield, its trees reduced to st
u
mps, its fields coursed with twisted barbed wire and miles of trenches, its villages reduced to rubble. For mile after mile, the disgusting perfume of death hung in the air like a fog. Mud-caked and broken, soldiers, dri
v
en to the edge of insanity, hunched in their trenches, cursed the rain and the shells which intermittently poured down on them, dreamt of home, faced chattering machine guns, aerial bombs, mines and an equally insane army of Germans in a crazy leapfrog of battles in which thousands
sometimes
died in a single day. All to gain a f
e
w miles of decimated earth.