I was back in Guadalcanal, back in my shell hole, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t raining and it wasn’t wet and tropical flowers-red and blue and yellow and violet and gold-were everywhere. All the boys were there-Barney, that big Indian Monawk, D’Angelo too, with both his legs-nobody was shot-up or bleeding at all, they were in spiffy dress uniforms one minute and then loud tropical shirts and slacks and sandals the next, and we would sit on the edge of the shell hole and sip champagne from glasses served to us off silver trays by gorgeous native girls in grass skirts and no tops. Sun streamed through swaying palms and Bing Crosby interrupted his rendition of “Moonlight Becomes You” to introduce me to Dorothy Lamour, who asked me if I minded if she slipped out of her sarong because it was so tight, while Bob Hope was going around telling dirty jokes to the guys. I asked where the Japs were and everybody laughed and said, They’re all dead! and the Krauts are, too, and we all laughed and laughed, but the only thing wrong was, it was too hot, really way too hot. Dorothy Lamour looked at me with sympathy in her big beautiful eyes and said, Let me soothe you, and she wiped my brow with a cool cloth….
“Dreaming,” I said.
“You’re not dreamin’ now,” she said.
“Marjorie?”
“Shhhh.” Her beautiful milk-chocolate face was smiling over me; her eyes were big and brown and as beautiful as Dorothy Lamour’s…
“You still got a fever. You just rest.”
“Marjorie,” I said. I smiled.
She wiped my brow with the cool cloth and I drifted away.
Sunlight woke me. I blinked awake, tried to sit up but the pain in my midsection wouldn’t let me.
“Nathan! I’m sorry! I’ll shut the curtains….”
I heard the rustle of curtains closing. I was in her cottage, in a nightshirt in her little bed that folded out from a cabinet. I could smell the flowers in the bowl on her table; I had smelled them in my dreams.
Then she was at my side, pulling up a chair to sit; she was in the white short-sleeve blouse and tropical-print skirt she’d worn that first night she invited me in for tea.
Her smile was radiant. “Your fever, it broke, finally. You remember talkin’ to me at all?”
“Just once. I thought I was dreaming. You were wiping my face with a cloth.”
“We talked a lot of times, but you were burnin’ up. Now you’re cool. Now you know where you are.”
“Help me sit up?”
She nodded and moved forward and put the pillow behind me. I found a position that didn’t hurt.
“How did I get here?”
“That British fella, he brought you here.”
“Fleming?”
“He never said his name. He looks cruel but is really very sweet, you know.”
“When?”
“Three days ago. He stops in every day. You’ll see him later. You must be hungry.”
The pain in my stomach wasn’t just the bullet wound.
“I think I am hungry. Have I eaten anything?”
“You been takin’ some broth. You want some more? I got some conch chowder.”
“Conch chowder.”
“Banana fritters too?”
“Oh yes…”
She brought the food to me on a little tray, but insisted on feeding it to me like a baby, a spoonful at a time; I was too weak to resist.
“Marjorie…you’re so pretty…you’re so goddamn pretty….”
“You better sleep some more. The doctor says you need rest.”
The doctor, as it turned out, was de Marigny’s friend Ricky Oberwarth, who had lost his part-time position with the Nassau Jail because his medical examination of Freddie hadn’t backed up Barker and Melchen’s singed-hair story. Oberwarth-a thin, dark man in his forties whose glasses had heavy dark frames-stopped by later that morning and checked my wound and changed the dressing.
“You’re doing well,” he said. He had a slight Teutonic accent, reminding me that he was a refugee from Germany, one of the rare Jews welcomed to Nassau, thanks to his medical expertise.
“It’s sore as a boil. Don’t spare the morphine.”
“You only had morphine the first day. And starting today you’re on oral painkillers. Mr. Heller, you know, you’re a lucky man.”
“Why do doctors always tell unlucky bastards like me how lucky they are?”
“The bullet passed through you and didn’t cause any damage that time and scar tissue won’t take care of. Still, I wanted you in hospital, but your guardian angel from British Naval Intelligence forbade it. He wanted you kept in some out-of-the-way place, and since you hadn’t lost enough blood to need a transfusion, I relented.”
“How did he know to bring me here?”
He had finished changing the dressing, and pulled down my nightshirt and covered me back up, like a loving parent. “I don’t know. Your friend Fleming isn’t much on volunteering information.”
When the doctor had gone, I asked Marjorie if Lady Oakes objected to my presence.
Her smile was mischievous. “Lady Eunice, she doesn’t know about your presence. She’s in Bar Harbor.”
“What about Nancy?”
“She doesn’t know, either.”
“I killed a woman.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Oh God, I killed a woman. Jesus….”
She climbed onto the bed gingerly and held me in her arms like a big baby, which is exactly what I was crying like. I don’t know why-later, in retrospect, killing Lady Diane Medcalf seemed not only logical but necessary and even admirable. She was at least as evil as any mobster I ever knew.
But right now I was crying. I think I was crying for the death of the funny, bitchy society dame I had thought she was-not the slum girl who clawed her way into royal circles, though maybe she deserved some tears, too.
Marjorie never asked me what I meant; she never asked me about the woman I said I killed. She had to have wondered, but she knew what I needed was comfort, not questions, let alone recriminations.
She was a special girl, Marjorie-one of a kind, and when I look back, I wonder why I didn’t drag her off to some out island and raise crops and kids, black or white or speckled-who gave a shit, with a woman like this at your side?
Which is why I cried so long. At some point the sorrow or guilt or whatever the hell it was I was feeling for Di merged with the overwhelming bittersweet ache I felt knowing that this sweet woman who was holding me, comforting me, nursing me back to health, was as lost to me as the dead one.
My tears weren’t just for Di. They were for both the lovely women I’d lost in the Caribbean.
Fleming appeared in the doorway that evening like a pastel illusion-light blue sportcoat, pale yellow sport shirt, white trousers. He looked like a tourist with exceptional taste.
“Back in the land of the living, I see,” he said, smiling faintly. Marjorie had only one small lamp on, and the near darkness threw shadows on his angular face.
Marjorie stepped to the door, glanced our way shyly. “I’ll just walk outside in the moonlight while you gentlemen are talkin’.”
Fleming turned his smile on her, melting the girl. “Thank you, my dear.”
Beaming, Marjorie slipped outside.
Fleming’s smile settled in one cheek. “Lovely child. You’re fortunate to have a nurse with such exceptional qualities.”
“She thinks you’re sweet, too.”
He withdrew a smoke from his battered gold case. “Most women do. Would you like one?”
He meant cigarettes, not women.
“No thanks. The mood’s passed.”
“How is your mood?”
“All right, considering. Hurts a little.”
“Your side or your psyche?”
“Choose your poison. Why did you bring me here, Fleming? How did you know to bring me to Marjorie?”
“You really don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
His smile crinkled. “Asking me to bring you here. You were barely conscious, but you clearly said, ‘Marjorie Bristol,’ and when I asked where to find her, you said, ‘Westbourne guest cottage.’ Then you put a period on the sentence by spitting up some blood.”
“What about Diane? She is dead, isn’t she?”
He nodded. “There are services tomorrow. Nancy is quite crushed, poor girl. You see, Diane died in a boating accident-went down with the craft that bore her name. Body wasn’t recovered-lost at sea.”
I laughed without humor. “You secret agents really are good at ‘tidying up,’ aren’t you?”
“We have to be, with the likes of Nathan Heller making messes. Besides, you’re lucky we’re so fastidious. If I hadn’t come back to Shangri La to tidy up further, after disposing of that carrion, you’d be lost at sea, as well.”
“So that’s how you stumbled onto me.”
“Yes. Now-tell me how it happened.”
“How I killed, her, you mean?”
He nodded again, blowing smoke through his nose like a dragon. “And what led up to it, if you don’t mind.”
I did, including dropping in on Lansky and Christie, and my theory about the Banco Continental being a Nazi repository.
“Very insightful, Heller. Banco Continental is indeed where much of the Nazi spoils of Europe are cached. Of course, the Banco is much more than that.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
He shrugged. “Among Banco Continental’s other significant investments and holdings is its funding of a syndicate supplying Japan with oil, as well as platinum and other rare metals. That same syndicate has cornered the market in hemp, copper and mercury as well-crucial war materials for the U.S.”
“And you agree with me that Harry got royally pissed off when he got wind of all that?”
“Not only do I agree,” the British agent said, “your FBI does as well. I’ve checked with them. Sir Harry had made some preliminary contacts.”
“Jesus. I ought to go into the detective business.”
“Or the spy game. That was an impressive showing, the other night-quite a savage beast lurks beneath that relatively civilized exterior of yours.”
“Gee thanks. Tell me-do you think the Duke knows his precious Banco is an Axis operation?”
“I would imagine not. At least, I would hope not. My thinking is that Wenner-Gren kept certain of the members of his consortium in the dark about various aspects of Banco Continental’s activities. Trust me when I say the Duke will soon be briefed in detail, and cautioned to curtail these activities in the future.”
“Where does that leave me?”
“As pertains to what?”
“As pertains to the Oakes case. Nancy de Marigny hired me to stay with it, you know!”
“I’m afraid that’s out of the question. Neither your government nor mine needs the sorry scandal of the Duke’s activities publicly aired. Perhaps when the war is over.”
“What do I tell Nancy?”
“What did you promise her, exactly?”
I told him about seeing Hallinan and Pemberton; about the letter they’d requested from me.
“Write the letter,” he said. “If I were you, however, I would not be specific about the new evidence…hold that back for another day.”
“Because on this particular day, the Duke will quash any investigation?”
“Certainly. But by writing that letter, your pledge to Mrs. de Marigny will be fulfilled. I think with the imminent deportation of her husband, and the tragic death of her best friend coming upon the heels of the loss of her father, Nancy Oakes de Marigny will be ready to get on with her life.”
He was probably right.
“This still isn’t over, you know,” I said.
“I should say from your standpoint it is.”
“Not hardly. There’s still that son of a bitch Axel Wenner-Gren to deal with. If I have to paddle a canoe up the Amazon, I’ll find that fucker and put a bullet in his brain.”
“And why would you do that?”
“Because he masterminded the whole goddamn affair!”
“Perhaps he did. Or perhaps Diane Medcalf took it upon herself to do these things. The answer to that question is at the bottom of the sea.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care. Either way, it’s still the fault of that evil cocksucker. As Meyer Lansky was kind enough to remind me, I’m a Jew. I’m not going to sit back and let these Nazi bastards get away with murder.”
He was lighting up a fresh cigarette; he seemed vaguely amused, and that pissed me off.
“What the hell is so funny, Fleming?”
He waved out his match, twitched a smile, said, “Sorry. It’s just that Wenner-Gren is no more a Nazi than the late Lady Medcalf.”
“Well, what the fuck is he, then?”
“Among other things, he’s the architect of Swedish neutrality, Goering’s financial advisor, Krupp’s front man…and so much more. He’s just not a Nazi, per se. But he is one of a consortium of some of the richest, most powerful men in the world-men who exist on a level above and beyond politics.”
“You mean Christie and the Duke and Wenner-Gren weren’t alone in their Mexican banking scheme.”
“To phrase it in the American argot: not by a long shot. Included, among various wealthy, respected Europeans, are some of the most prominent and influential American businessmen.”
“Backing Nazis?”
“Making money. Your General Motors poured one hundred million dollars into Hitler’s Germany, and they are hardly an isolated example. Heller, I would be content, were I you, with having dispatched the villains you’ve managed to dispatch. Aspiring to the shit list, as you might well put it, of that particular powerful consortium would find you rather on the deceased side, in very short order.”
I sat up sharply; it made my midsection hurt but I didn’t give a damn. “So Christie walks. And Axel Wenner-Gren…shit, I never even met the son of a bitch….”
“You should leave it that way.” He shrugged, drew in smoke. “The great villains of the world seldom get what they deserve.”
“Hitler will-Mussolini just did.”
He exhaled a blue cloud. “Possibly-but they are, after all, only petty politicians. And who’s to say Adolf himself won’t wind up in South America with all that bounty Wenner-Gren helped storehouse?”
“Do you believe that?”
Fleming’s smile was sadly ironic. “I’m afraid, Heller, the masterminds of evil only meet their due justice in the realm of fantasy. Best leave it to Sax Rohmer and Sapper.”
“Who are they?”
He laughed. “Nobody, really. Just writers.”
It had been a week and a half and I was, for the most part, healed. Certain wounds never heal, but I was getting used to that. I walked on the ivory beach under a poker-chip moon with my arm around Marjorie Bristol’s waist; she wore a white scoop-neck blouse with coral jewelry and the full blue-and-white-checked skirt with petticoats that swished.
“You saved my life,” I said.
“That British man, he saved your life.”
“He saved my body. You saved my life.”
“Not your soul, Nathan?”
“A little late for that.”
“Not your body?”
“That’s yours anytime you like.”
We walked some more; Westbourne was silhouetted against the clear night sky. The sand under our feet was warm, the breeze cool.
“Not mine anytime, anymore,” she said.
We turned back and walked until we were near the cottage. She removed the skirt, stepped out of the petticoats; she was naked beneath, the dark triangle drawing me. I put my hand there while she pulled the blouse over her head.
She stood, naked but for the coral necklace, washed with moonlight, unbuttoning my shirt, unzipping my trousers, pulling them around my ankles. I stepped out, barefoot; took off my shorts. I was wearing only the fresh bandage she’d applied about an hour ago.
We waded in, not so deep that I got my bandage wet. We stood with the water brushing our legs and embraced and kissed, kissed deeply, in every sense of the word. She lay in the sand half in the water and I eased on top of her and kissed her mouth and her eyes and her face and her neck and her breasts and her stomach and my lips brushed downward across the harsh curls stopping at wet warmth where I kissed her some more.
Her lovely face, ivory in the moonlight, lost in passion, was a vision I would never forget; I knew, as I was impressing that image forever in my mind, even as I pressed myself within her, that we would never do this again.
We lay together, nuzzling, kissing, saying nothing at all; then we sat and watched the shimmer of the ocean and the moon reflected there, breaking and reforming, breaking and reforming.
“Just a summer romance, Marjorie?”
“Not ‘just,’ a summer romance, Nathan…but a summer romance.”
“Summer’s over.”
“I know,” she said.
Hand in hand, we walked back inside.