Уильям Макгиверн - Soldiers of ’44

Bonnard watched him with an appraising smile. “Well? Satisfied?”

“Why didn’t the Germans take this loot with them?”

“The trucks coming from Brussels were hit by one of their own rocket bombs. They were like chickens with their heads off. Major Hunsicker’s staff took what they could in the single car that was left.”

At the end of the storeroom Larkin saw two chairs and a table with a stump of candle on it. He picked up a bottle of Cutty Sark and opened it. “Get some glasses,” he said.

Bonnard’s confident smile slipped. “I’ll have to bicycle a dozen kilometers to take word to Gervais. There’s no time.”

“We better make time,” Larkin said.

Bonnard hesitated, but there was something sullen and obstinate in the corporal’s expression, so he shrugged and turned into the kitchen. Larkin sat down and lit the candle.

He realized bitterly that he was intimidated by these elegant delicacies, potted meats and vintage wines and labeled names he couldn’t even pronounce, like Slivovitz and Kirschwasser and Armagnac. Jars of truffles and fish paste and goose liver pate were as off-limits to him as an officers’ hotel in Paris, or for that matter, the St. Regis or the Stork Club in New York.

The bottle of Cutty Sark paradoxically brought back a pair of sustaining memories, a night when he and Agnes had gone to the Richelieu on Fifty-second Street and had a good time drinking scotch and dancing and listening to a comedian, and another time at Christmas when he’d been working Penn Station and a group of Hollywood people traveling with the actor Lee Bowman had lost their luggage waiting to board the Broadway Limited for Chicago. Larkin found the suitcases, six of them in matched pigskin, and some guy in the party gave him a double sawbuck and a bottle of Cutty Sark for his trouble. And that night in the Railway Express baggage rooms, Larkin and his pals got a nice buzz on drinking and listening to the Christmas carols pouring in from the loudspeakers in the main waiting room. Their boss, old “Killjoy” Kranston, had tried to put a stop to it, but they were in no mood for his bitching and they laughed at him and told him where to ram it. That was some night, he thought, as Bonnard came back from the kitchen and set down a pair of wine glasses. Larkin poured drinks, and sipped slowly, a weariness settling over him.

It had seemed so easy last night, sitting by the fire and drinking the familiar black whiskey with Bonnard. Just borrow a truck, haul this food and booze over to Liège, a few hours from here. Bonnard knew a black market dealer, a Belgian named Gervais, who would sell the loot and they’d split the money three ways. Now Larkin was having second thoughts. Common sense told him he should take maybe a case of whiskey and a few cans of ham for the section and tell Bonnard to fuck off. It was too rich a deal for an Irisher from the lower East Side who, as his uncles had frequently told him, would be scratching a poor man’s ass all his life.

“There’s no danger, no risk for you or me,” Bonnard was saying.

“And that’s the way you like it,” Larkin said. “No chance of getting your ass caught in the wringer. Let somebody else take the flak.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your daughter, Bonnard.”

Bonnard looked startled. “What has Felice got to do with this?”

“Look, don’t shit me. I was there when you set it up.”

“Wait. You don’t understand—”

“I understand the whole deal, Bonnard. You put her on the block like a pig at a farm sale. Sure, your ass is never in the wringer. But while you’re standing on the sidelines, your daughter’s screwing Sonny Laurel and I’m driving a truck through country crawling with Germans.”

Bonnard sipped his drink and sighed, then said, “What I did was best for Felice.”

“That’s bullshit. You should of shot anybody trying to get to her.”

Actually the anger he heard in his voice disgusted him, as hypocritical as righteous old biddies gossiping at clotheslines behind East Side tenements, speculating with relish and indignation about who was drinking himself to death, who was waiting for pawnshops to open, and who had up and got married with no notice at all. Larkin found it difficult to find anyone to feel superior to. And his tirade at Bonnard, he realized, was only an attempt to convince himself that a father pimping for his daughter had to be a few shitty rungs below a thief working the black market.

Bonnard sighed again, but when he spoke his voice was brisk, a businessman explaining the details of his shop to an apprentice. “Look. When the Germans came here, Felice was ten years old. Major Hunsicker treated her like a pet. He liked her to bring his breakfast coffee. Our family is hated by the village, but we survived the Germans. We’ll be here when they are gone and you are gone. What’s the good of fighting when you have nothing to fight with?”

The Belgian put an imaginary pistol to his forehead and closed his index finger with a decisive gesture. “Edmond Francoeur, the brother of the schoolteacher, recruited some idiots and blew up the baggage train from Liège. Francoeur and nine hostages were shot in front of the church in Lepont. Did that teach the stupid patriots a lesson? No. Jocko Berthier, who walks like a broken crab, placed a radio transmitter in the church. And the schoolteacher—”

“Hold it,” Larkin said. “Is the transmitter working?”

“No, not for months.”

“What about the schoolteacher?”

“Her brother married a Jewish girl in Germany. There was a child, Margret. And the schoolteacher is keeping the child in her home. How many hostages will die if the Germans come back and find that Jew? How many lives is that useless transmitter worth?” Bonnard shook his head emphatically. “Staying alive, that’s what matters.” He drew a handkerchief from an inside pocket of his overcoat and blew his nose. His eyes had become moist and red. “So, in my place, corporal, what man would you choose?” He tapped his forehead. “... the childish one, your cook? The one who is so frightened? Who would you choose, corporal? I know the sort of man your Laurel is. He won’t hurt Felice. And she’ll forget him before the snows run down to the river in the spring.”

Larkin smiled bitterly. “You picked Sonny Laurel for lover-boy. And me for the thief. Is that what I look like?”

Bonnard shrugged, and Larkin thought maybe this one time his uncles might be wrong, maybe he wouldn’t have to scratch a poor man’s ass the rest of his life.

“Anybody else know about this loot?”

“No. Not even the priest, not even Trude.”

“Let’s keep it that way.” Larkin put the bottle of Cutty Sark in his pocket and went up the stairs and out the front doors of the castle. His chest felt better, the whiskey had eased the pain, but the winds stung his raw cheeks and the change in temperature made him feel almost drunk. He knew he’d better work that off before he talked to Docker.

The sergeant and Trankic and Jackson Baird stood together at the edge of the hill, the bulk of the cannon revetment behind them, their figures blurred and indistinct in the mists.

“I worked on a construction job one summer in Peeks-kill,” Trankic said. “Where’d you live, kid?”

“Near First and South Division Street.”

“What’s the name of the big public park?”

“It’s Depew Park, named after Chauncey Depew.”

“On the north side, right?”

“No, the south side.”

“You know where the old hospital is?”

“On the bluff just above the railroad.”

Docker: “You ever visit West Point?”

“Yes, our scoutmaster took us there a couple of times.”