Carol O’Connell - Shell Game

He signed the bill with his room number, and the waiter left them again. „I’m afraid Nick’s character will never improve. He still flirts with everything that moves. Male, female, it doesn’t matter. Breathing is Nick’s only known criterion.“

„Did you ever sleep with a German soldier? You claim you were in the Resistance. But lots of people said that – after the Germans left town. Maybe you were a collaborator?“ He would never see her next line coming.

„No, Mallory, on both counts. Never slept with Nick either, though I was tempted. During the occupation, I was something of a monk. I still am.“

„I know you were an executioner on a Maquis firing squad.“ She had surprised him that time. Smoke drifted from his open mouth. He had forgotten to exhale.

„That doesn’t fit well with monk’s robes.“ She set her wineglass to one side. The socializing was done, the underbelly was laid open for her, and now – down to business. „My college history professor lived in France during the occupation. He said it was a bloodbath right after the liberation. So tell me – how many people did you kill for the Maquis?“

She had touched on something old, but painful still.

„Did Charles tell you that? Yes, it had to be him. Odd that he would remember that old conversation. He was only six or seven years old. I could’ve sworn he was asleep. Max and I had taken him to a magic show and a late supper. Charles was curled up on the rug by the fire, completely exhausted. Max indulged the child when his parents were out of town. No vegetables and no fixed bedtime. The boy just fell asleep wherever he dropped, and then Max would put him to bed.“

No side trips, St. John. Back to the war. „So you told Max about the firing squad.“

„I had to talk to someone. I was going through a difficult time – a period of adjustment after the war. It lasted for many years. I was still struggling with it that night. I knew Max would understand. He’d killed in the war. But the people I – “ He toyed with his glass for a moment. „Those people were helpless when I shot them, tied up to posts and blinded with pieces of cloth. The squad didn’t observe the tradition of one gun with blanks. All the bullets from every man’s rifle went into human flesh. There was no chance for self-deception, for the possibility of clean hands.“

„Thousands were arrested – a few hundred survived to stand trial.“

„Yes, it was like that in the first few months. My compliments to your teacher. The mobs killed a great many people for real and imagined crimes. But this Maquisard unit was executing convicted war criminals – French citizens so eager to please their masters, they went the Germans one better. Their crimes had such zeal and cruelty. Two of them had gouged out the eyes of a living woman and filled the sockets with cockroaches. Getting caught by the Germans wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to you in occupied France.“

„The trials were drum-barrel justice.“

„A military term. That’s from the American Civil War, isn’t it? A drum overturned on the battleground, an instant court and a swift execution. Yes, right again. I think an abattoir, a bloody assembly line would be a better analogy for the early trials. After the liberation, it seemed that every man and woman in France was part of the Resistance movement. Or so they all claimed – the accused and their accusers. I always suspected the ones who wanted the most blood, the loudest witnesses in court. I have no idea how many innocents were shot by the firing squads.“ He pushed his chair back from the table. „Since then, I’ve led a celibate existence, doing penance.“

„A monk and an executioner.“ She raised her open hands, as if she were weighing these words, one against the other.

„You don’t think I took any pleasure in those executions?“

She nodded slowly. That was exactly what she thought. „You had to volunteer for a job like that.“

„I did volunteer.“ He puffed on his cigar, comfortable in the knowledge that the waiter would not bother him with regulations about smoking in public – the privilege of money and lavish tips. He exhaled and watched the gray plume twining upward. His eyes searched the smoke. „All around me there were men with too much relish for that kind of work. I believed killing should always be done with deep regret. And so, regretfully, I picked up my rifle and shot helpless humans with their hands tied behind their backs.“

He bowed his head to examine the dregs of his wine, a small pool of red at the bottom of the glass. When he spoke again, his voice was too calm. There was no rise and fall of inflection, no emotion at all.

„The best method is a pistol, close to the head. But we were very young gunmen. So inexperienced at efficient killing. We used rifles, and we stood some distance away from – the targets. In an error of compassion, we avoided the head shots that would have given them a quick death. The bullets we fired into their breasts ruptured their hearts and lungs. Done wrong, it’s a death of internal hemorrhaging – not an instant kill, as you might suppose. I’ve made a great study of this over the years.“

He looked up from his glass, and she wished that he had not. Later, she would remember his eyes as somehow broken, full of sorrow and so at odds with this dry recital of facts.

„Each round creates a cavity a hundred times larger than the bullet. You see, the heat of impact boils away the blood and the fat of the tissue.“ His hands clenched tightly, knuckles whitening. „So every bullet acts like a fist reaching into the body, rupturing skin, shattering bones. I was close enough to see the people trembling as they were tied up to the posts. With the first round, they dropped quickly, sliding down the poles, dragging the ropes of their bound hands. But they were still alive. I kept punching bullets into their bodies until they stopped screaming to God, so crazy with fear and pain. Until they finally stopped moving, and the insanity – stopped.“

Judging only by the wildlife of cockroaches in the sink and pink-flamingo statuary cavorting on dead grass outside his window, Franny Futura had never imagined that squalor could be quite this tacky. He wept for the chipped furniture and the noise the plumbing made when residents on either side of his motel room used the toilet. Years ago, the cracked and dirty walls must have been painted a brighter hue; now they were the color of an aged salmon dying of natural causes.

Franny walked to the only window and looked through a hole in the curtains. He counted the flamingos. One pink plaster bird might have been considered kitsch, an interesting statement. But this flock of four was a deliberate and frightening attempt at decor.

So this was New Jersey.

Nick had told him not to leave the room, but the telephone by the bed had no dial tone. He stared at the public booth on the other side of the parking lot, an upended glass coffin exposed to the traffic of a busy highway – a million pairs of eyes a minute.

It was dangerous to leave the room, or so Nick had said. Franny believed it, for he was always willing to be frightened at the least provocation. He had read somewhere that fear was a genetic thing, that some people were wired from birth to be less brave than others – not his fault.

But he was not a complete coward. In recent years, all civility had ended, and he had been heckled, hissed and booed by the crowds. There had been times when he feared they would rush the stage and pull him down. Yet he had always remained to finish his act, hands trembling and tears passing for flopsweat. And now he had traveled for thousands of miles, for years and years – for what?