Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

“You’re a very brave man, lieutenant, a good man, too, to offer help in the face of a vindictive and powerful man like Father Rüstung,” said the doctor. “And I am certain that Mr. Moray recognizes and deeply appreciates your generous offer. But no, it would be just too much needless risk for you to undertake. Leave it to me. I have a motorcar, too, and I am not, thank God, in a position where that most unsaintly man can do me any harm.

“But I do agree with you that Milo must leave the city or even the state tonight. Technically, he is guilty of a so-called crime that could get him, if convicted, as much as fifteen years in prison. So, if you and the sergeant will leave now, the rest of us will make plans and save you the discomfort of having to arrest a friend of Mrs. O’Farrell’s.”

As prearranged, Milo descended from the train in South Bend, Indiana, and found an all-night diner near the depot, where he sat, drinking terrible coffee at a nickel the chipped mug and reading a day-old newspaper until the old wall clock said that it was nine a.m. He then made his way back to the deppt, found a telephone and placed a reverse-charges call, person-to-person to Patrick O’Shea, giving him the name they had decided upon, Tom Muldoon.

“Tommy, lad? Yes, operator, this is Patrick O’Shea. Yes, I’ll accept charges for the call. Tommy, I can’t talk to you but a minute. The whole bloody house is full of cops. Some feller used to room here, they’re after him, two carloads of them just come in and they’re after searching this house from cellar to attic. Anyhow, that guy I told you about, he’s been told you’re coming and he’ll be expectin’ you and he’ll take good care of you and if he don’t you let me know lickety-split… . A’right, lootenant, a’right, it’s just a old buddy from the War is all, and I ain’t talked to him in a coon’s age. What in hell you expect me to be able to tell you, the man’s gone is all. I’m closes’ thing to blind from gas, you know, I can’t see the damn street from the front stoop, not any kind of clear, so how can I tell you which way he went, huh? … Bye-bye, Tommy, I gotta go.”

By nine-thirty, Milo was aboard a train bound south for Indianapolis. As the engine picked up speed and the car began to sway, he settled down into the seat and closed his eyes and thought back to his last few hours in what had been for not quite a year the first home of which he had any memory.

“First of all,” said Gerald Guiscarde,” we need to figure out how you’re going to live after you leave here, your job and us, your friends. The last thing you want to do is seek a job as a translator. That would be a sure giveaway of just who you are, and if that priest is as dead set to clap you in jail as he gives every indication of being, he’ll probably have his Bund people all over the East as well as the Midwest looking for you and ready to have you picked up and extradited back here.

“Jobs of any kind are damned hard to find anywhere in this country, and if you live anything like well with no ^evident job you’re going to stand out like a sore thumb and attract the Bund. So where to tell you to go, what to tell you to do, Milo? I must confess, I can’t just now come up with an answer.”

“Well, I can, by cracky!” said Pat O’Shea.

“You always have the same thing on your mind,” snapped Maggie peevishly. “Maybe Milo doesn’t want to join the Army.”

“Well, it’s the bestest place for him, the way things is, Maggie. Look, doctor, I’s a perfeshnal soldier back before the war. I soldiered for twelve years, made staff sergeant, too, afore my folks all died and I had to come back home to try and run the brewery. And if it’s one thing I knows, it’s the Army.

“If Milo enlists—and I can get him enlisted, I still got frinds from the old days is recruiters, two of them—the Army ain’t gonna turn him over to no civil police for nothin’ he done as a civilian, not unless he’d murdered or raped or kidnapped or robbed banks or somethin’ really bad. Them bugtit feather merchants do try to come after him for fornicatin’, for the love of mud, Army’s gonna perlitely tell them where to go and what to do to theyselfs when they gets there, is all. Just as long’s a man don’t fu—ahhh, mess up as a soldier, the Army don’t give a hill of beans what he done before.

“And as for them Kraut-lovers, that Bund and all, it’s more’n enough old soldiers what fought in France in the War is still around to make short shrift of any them comes sniff in’ around after Milo.”

“You know, Mrs. O’Shea, your husband may be right. The Army may well be the answer we so desperately need to keep Milo out of that priest’s clutches. I think the minimum enlistment in the armed services is three years, and by that time surely all of this sorry business will be ancient history. But the question now is, how are we going to get him down to the recruiting office and signed up before the police pick him up on that warrant and clap him behind bars?”

Pat chuckled. “I got the answer to that one, too, doctor. I knows thishere recruiter in Indianapolis, see. Milo can get on a train and get out of Illinois, tonight, see. I can call my old buddy firstest thing he opens up in the morning and tell him enough of what’s going on to get him ready for Milo when he gets there, see. Milo’ll just have to kill some time somewheres till the right time to go to the recruitin’ office is all, but we can work that out in jig time.”

At Pat’s suggestion, Milo packed only his razor and a few toiletries, a few days’ worth of underwear and socks, a couple of shirts and a few books. As an afterthought, the old soldier suggested adding the fine, strong padlock from off the moneybox chain, saying that such would be useful for the securing of issue lockers in the barracks. Milo threw in a wad of handkerchiefs, then closed and locked the thick briefcase which was the sole piece of luggage of any description he owned.

It was while he was packing that Rosaleen bore up the stairs to his room a picnic basket packed well-nigh to bursting with food “for your journey, love.”

Reopening the briefcase, he managed to make room for but three of the thick sandwiches. But then Rosaleen took over, emptied the case and repacked it so competently that she was able to add two more sandwiches, a slab of cheese and a half-dozen hard-boiled eggs, a small jar of pickles and a brace of red apples.

“Do you have a pocket knife?” inquired Pat. When Milo shook his head, the old man dug deep into his pants pocket and brought out an old, worn, but razor-edged Barlow. “A soldier needs him a good knife, Milo; I don’t, I can’t even see good enough to whittle no more. Mrs. O’Shea, she’ll be damn glad I give it to you, she’s plumb sick and tired of fixin’ up my cut fingers as it is.

“I’ll pack up the resta your clothes and things, Milo, and put them in a old cedar chest is up in the attic with some mothballs, too. You can send for them whenever you wants them, see.”

“No, Pat, thank you, but no,” Milo told him. “Sell them for whatever you can, or give them away. One thing, though. Rosaleen, can you find me a legal-sized envelope and a sheet of blank paper?”

While the woman was gone, Milo opened his strongbox and emptied it onto the small writing table. He quickly divided the couple hundred dollars in smaller bills between his billfold and several of his pockets, then tucked a couple of fifties from the sale of the gold into each sock. The rest of the stack of bills he divided, and when the old cook returned with the stationery, he placed a thousand dollars into the envelope and dashed off a quick note.

“Sol, I am leaving town for good. Where I’m bound, I won’t need all this cash, so I want you and your family to have it. With this for a nest egg, you might be able to finish law school, and I think you should. No, you can’t give it back to me, for not even I know where I’ll be when you get it. Milo Moray.”