Johnny Temple - USA Noir - Best of the Akashic Noir Series

The Brit laughed then. Or he was still the Brit to me. A big man, with a big laugh, hard to dislike, but I can’t say I cared for him. He joined our group anyway. We ate then and we drank. We had antipasti. We had crabs and shrimp. We had mussels and linguini. Every once in a while someone would come in from the street with news. At the Yacht Harbor now… three men in a rowboat… the marines are inside, cell-­to-cell, shooting them in their cots. At some point, Ellen Pagione, Fontana’s sister-in-law, came out of the kitchen to make a fuss over me.

“I had no idea you were back in town.” She pressed her cheek against mine. “This boy is my favorite,” she said. “My goddamn favorite.”

Part of me liked the attention, I admit, but another part, I knew better. Ellen Pagione had never liked my father. Maybe she didn’t approve of what had happened to him, though, and felt bad. Or maybe she had pointed a finger her­self. Either way, she loved me now. Everyone in North Beach, we loved one another now.

Anne smiled. Girl that she was, she believed the whole thing.

A little while later, she leaned toward me. She was a lit­tle in her cups maybe. Her cheeks were flush.

“I want to take you home.”

Then she looked away. I wondered if I’d heard correctly. The table was noisy. Then the Brit raised his glass, and every­one was laughing.

After dinner, Johnny Maglie grabbed me at the bar. I was shaking inside, I’m not sure why. Johnny wanted to buy me a beer, and I went along, though I knew I’d had enough. There comes a time, whatever the drink is holding under, it comes back up all of a sudden and there’s nothing you can do. At the moment, I didn’t care. I caught a glimpse of Anne. Some of the others had left, but she was still at the table. So was the Brit.

“How’s your mom?” It was the same question Johnny had asked before, out on the street, but maybe he’d forgotten.

“She’s got her dignity,” I said.

“That’s right. Your mama. She’s always got her head up.” He was a little drunk and a smirk showed on his face.

I knew what people said about my mother. Or I could guess, anyway. She was a Northern Italian, like my father, from Genoa. Refinement was important to her. We were not wealthy, but this wasn’t the point. My father had only been a newspaperman, but it had been a newspaper of ideas, and the prominenti had respected him. Or so we had thought. My mother had tried for a little while to live in Montana, outside the camp where he was imprisoned, but it had been too remote, too brutal. So she had gone back to North Beach and lived with her sister. Now the war was over, and the restric­tions had been lifted, but my father would not return. He had been disgraced, after all. And the people who could have helped him then—the people to whom he had catered, peo­ple like Judge Molinari, Johnny Maglie’s uncle—they had done nothing for him. Worse than nothing.

“Are you going to stay in The Beach?” Johnny asked.

I didn’t answer. My father worked in one of the casinos in Reno now, dealing cards. He lived in a clapboard house with Sal Fusco and Sal’s daughter, Julia. Julia took care of them both.

About two months ago something had happened between Julia and me. It was the kind of thing that happens sometimes. To be honest, I didn’t feel much toward her other than loyalty.

“So what are you going to do?”

I glanced toward Anne. The Brit had slid closer and was going on in that big-chested way of his.

“I don’t know.”

But I did know. There was a little roadhouse on the edge of Reno with some slots and card tables. Sal Fusco wanted my father and I to go into business with him. To get the loan, all I had to do was shake hands with Pellicano, the crab fisher­man. But my father, I knew, did not really care about the roadhouse. All he wanted was for my mother to come to Reno.

I had spoken to my mother just hours before.

“If this is what you want, I will do it,” she said.

“It’s not for me. It’s for him.”

“Your father can come back here. The war is over.”

“He has his pride.”

“We all have our shame. You get used to it. At least here, I can wear my mink to the opera.”

“There is no opera anymore.”

“There will be again soon,” she said. “But if this is what you want, I will go to Reno. If this is what my son wants…”

I understood something then. She blamed my father. Someone needed to take blame, and he was the one. And part of me, I understood. Part of me didn’t want to go back to Reno either.

“It’s what I want,” I said.

Johnny Maglie looked at me with those big eyes of his. He wanted something from me. Like Ellen Pagione wanted. Like my father wanted. Like Julia Fusco. For a minute, I hated them all.

“I know how you used to talk about going into law,” Johnny said. “Before all this business.”

“Before all what business?”

“Before the war…” he stammered. “That’s all I meant. I know you wanted to be an attorney.”

“Everything’s changed.”

“My uncle—he said he would write a letter for you. Not just any school. Stanford. Columbia. His recommendation, it carries weight.”

I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a rush of excitement—that I didn’t sense a door opening and a chance to walk into another life.

“Is it because he feels guilty?” I asked. “Because of what happened to my father? He was at the hearing, wasn’t he?”

Johnny looked at me blankly, as if he didn’t understand.

“I saw Jake yesterday.”

Jake was Judge Molinari’s boy. He was a sweet-faced kid. His father’s pride and joy. He’d done his tour in Sicily and distinguished himself, from what I heard.

“How’s he doing?”

“Getting married.”

“Good for him.”

Back at the table, the Brit raised another glass. Beside him, Anne was beautiful. The way the Brit was looking at her, I didn’t guess he was thinking about his buddy overseas.

I was born circa 1921. The records aren’t exact. It doesn’t matter. Like I said, there are times, these days, when I can’t place the current date either. It is 1998, maybe. Or 2008. The nurse who takes care of me—who scoots me up off my ass and empties my bedpan—she was born in Saigon, just before the fall. 1971, I think. French Vietnamese, but the French part doesn’t matter here in the States. Either way, she doesn’t give a fuck about me. Outside the sunlight is white, and I glimpse the airplanes descending. We have a new airport, a new convention center. Every place, these days, has a new convention center. Every place you go, there are airplanes descending and signs advertising a casino on the edge of town.

I close my eyes. The Brit gets up all of a sudden, goes out into the night. I see Anne alone at the table. I see my father dealing cards in Reno. I see Julia Fusco in my father’s kitchen, fingers on her swollen belly.

My kid. My son.

A few days ago, for recreation, they wheeled us to the convention center. We could have been anywhere. Chicago. Toronto. I spotted a couple in the hotel bar, and it didn’t take a genius to see what was going on.

You can try to fuck your way out. You can work the slot. You can run down the long hall but in the end the door is locked and you are on your belly, crawling through smoke.

No one escapes.

The nurse comes, rolls me over.

Go to sleep , she says. Go to fucking sleep .

“I was on Guam.” Anne and I were outside now, just the two of us. The evening was all but over. “The Japanese were on top of the hill. A machine-gun nest.”