D. MacHale - The Never War

“It was perfect,” I added. “And totally worth it. Wait’ll you hear.” The two of us parted and went about our business for the rest of the day as if nothing scary had happened.

That night Spader, Gunny, and I met in our room, and I told them everything that had happened in Max Rose’s penthouse.

“So these Nazi wogglies,” Spader said, “they’re pretty nasty characters?”

“Yes,” was my simple answer.

“As bad as the gangster boys around here?” he asked.

“Worse,” I answered. “These guys aren’t just criminals. The Nazis are about taking over the whole territory and murdering millions of people along the way.”

“So they’re like, Saint Dane-bad,” was Spader’s conclusion.

“Yeah, they’re Saint Dane-bad,” I agreed.

“So then, what are they planning together?” Spader asked with frustration.

“That is the big question, isn’t it?” Gunny said.

What was Saint Dane trying to do here? Aside from the murderous mission of two gangsters at the flume in the subway, the demon hadn’t made his presence known. ”The Nazis are going to pay Max Rose for his services on May sixth,” I said while pacing. “I think if we figure out what Max Rose is doing for the Nazis, we’ll know what Saint Dane’s plan is.”

“And what is Ludwig Zell-one-twenty-nine?” asked Spader. “Sounds like some kind of code.”

“We don’t know if it’s Ludwig Zell-one-twenty-nine,” I said. “Only L-Z-one-two-nine.”

I looked to Gunny, but Gunny only shrugged. LZ-129 might be the key to this whole thing, or mean absolutely nothing.

“I’ll keep snooping around,” said Gunny.

We ended the meeting by saying we had to keep a closer eye on Max Rose and his band of merry men. We decided to read every newspaper we could get, every day, to see if there was any mention of LZ-129 or Ludwig Zell. You never knew. For the first time since I had gotten to First Earth, I had the feeling that we were on our way to figuring out what Saint Dane had in mind to disrupt this territory.

I was absolutely, totally wrong.

Whatreallyhappened after that meeting was nothing. I’m serious, absolutely nothing. The trail went stone freakin’ cold. Max Rose never left the penthouse. Ludwig Zell didn’t come by the hotel again. We didn’t have any trouble with Winn Farrow and his gang of killers. We read every newspaper from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, but didn’t find a single reference to Ludwig Zell or LZ-129. Remember, this was long before the Internet. It’s not like we could sign on to a search engine, input “Ludwig Zell, evil Nazi mobster plan” and get a complete history of the guy and what he was up to.

This waswayfrustrating.

Gunny even went to some government offices to look for any documents that showed the kinds of businesses Max Rose was involved in. Good idea, except for one thing. This was 1937. An African American guy walking into government offices looking for information wasn’t exactly common. This was long before the civil rights movement. Guys like Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King Jr., Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas from the Supreme Court, and Nelson Mandela hadn’t broken down any barriers yet. They didn’t even have very many black movie stars like Will Smith or Eddie Murphy.

So Gunny pretty much walked into a bunch of brick walls.

It would have been a totally depressing situation, if Spader and I hadn’t tried to have a little fun along the way. He showed me a good time on his home territory of Cloral, so I wanted to do the same for him on First Earth.

I took him to see a lot of movies. He had never seen anything like a movie before, and it was fun to watch his reaction. He was freaked at first, kind of like when we saw the holograms on Veelox. But after a while he got with the program. The admission price was only twenty-five cents. Can you believe it? I took him to see lots of Marx Brothers movies, my favorite beingA Night at the Opera. We saw some Westerns with a guy named Tom Mix, and even saw the originalKing Kong. It was fun to see these movies on a big screen instead of television.

We toured all over New York. I took him to the top of the Empire State Building, which was cool because we had just seen King Kong climb the thing. We went to the Statue of Liberty and Grand Central Station and even took a subway out to Coney Island to ride the rides and eat hot dogs.

I think my favorite day was when we went up to the Bronx. No, not to the flume. We went to a Yankees game. I couldn’t believe it, but I saw both Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio play! How cool isthat? Spader didn’t understand the game and it was hard to explain, but it didn’t matter. I was in hog heaven.

And speaking of heaven, we also played a lot of basketball.

When it comes to athletic stuff, I have to admit that Spader is better than I am in everything. He’s a little older and bigger, which helps. (At least, that’s what I tell myself.) But when it comes to basketball, well, that’s my game.

At the risk of sounding crude, I kicked his ass. We set up a hoop in an alley behind the hotel and snuck out every chance we got. Gunny found us a crusty old leather ball. The rim was all bent and rusty with no net, but it didn’t matter. I recruited some of the other bellhops, and we played two on two. We even got Dewey to play, but he was worse than Spader. Poor guy.

Our games were like minivacations away from Traveler worries. They put my mind back to a time and place when things were a whole lot easier, and the biggest concern I had was whether or not Courtney liked me as much as I liked her. (Yes, Courtney, I used to think about that a lot. I admit it.)

Though our adventures exploring First Earth were excellent, there was always the big old sword of worry hanging over our heads. The longer we went without finding out anything about Max Rose and the Nazis, the more anxious I became. May 6 was drawing closer. It was beginning to look as if nothing would happen until then.

I was wrong. On May 3, things started getting interesting again.

The day started out normally, except that the hotel was expecting a celebrity guest. Her name was Nancy Olsen, but everybody knew her as “Jinx.” She was a pilot who flew for the Coast Guard. They didn’t have many women pilots back then, and Jinx was a real hotshot. She was touring around the country doing public relations. I guess the idea was to get women interested in signing up for military service. In 1937 women didn’t normally do things like fly for the Coast Guard, so Jinx Olsen was unique.

Her tour brought her to New York, where she was going to stay at the hotel for a week while making appearances and giving speeches. There was even a big party planned for her in the ballroom on the twenty-ninth floor of the hotel. It was going to be a big doo-dah with a band and celebrities and politicians and the works. Spader and I had already been asked to be waiters for the party because there were going to be over two hundred guests, and they needed all the help they could get.

When Jinx Olsen arrived at the hotel, I could tell instantly why she was chosen to be the poster girl for the Coast Guard. She was tall and pretty and oozed confidence. Most of the women I had seen on First Earth wore dresses-but not Jinx. She had on khakis and a worn, brown leather jacket. But she didn’t look like a guy. No way. She had these dazzling green eyes and a big smile that absolutely lit up the room. When she first strode into the hotel lobby with her duffel bag over her shoulder, the first word that jumped into my head was “adventurer.”

The hotel manager, a chubby guy named Mr. Caplesmith, was right there to greet her. “Welcome, Miss Olsen,” he said. “We are so honored to have you stay with us.”

Jinx stopped short, stared the guy square in the eyes and asked, “Why?”