“You always have, Barney. So promise me you aren’t going back over there.”
“That’s an easy one to keep. I won’t be going back, Nate. I got an arm and leg loaded with shrapnel. It’ll be months before I can get around without my trusty voodoo stick.”
He was referring to his carved native cane, leaned up against the side of the booth next to him. The big head of the cane was a face with mirrorlike stones for eyes. In the mouth were what seemed to be six human teeth.
“Genuine Jap teeth,” Barney said, proudly, noticing me noticing them.
“Good, Barney,” I said. “It’s nice to know you didn’t go Asiatic or anything over there.”
Cathy spoke up. “Barney’s been transferred to the Navy’s Industrial Incentive Division.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with social disease, does it?” I asked him.
He made a face. “Are you nuts?”
“Yeah, but don’t knock it-it got me out of the service.” I explained briefly about Eliot’s VD-busting role, and how he’d tried to hide behind governmental gobbledygook telling me about it. Barney got a laugh out of that.
“They’re gonna send me touring war plants,” he shrugged, seeming embarrassed, “telling the workers how the weapons and stuff they’re making are helping us lick the Japs. Fat duty. Pretty chickenshit, really.”
Cathy looked pointedly, first at him, then at me, and said. “Don’t listen to him. The brass told him this was important duty, just as important in its way as Guadalcanal. There’s a serious absenteeism at some war plants, and a half-time talk from a hero like my husband can really get those workers off their rears and breaking their necks to beat production schedules!”
She was as full of energy as all three Andrews Sisters, but there was something wrong behind all that pep. Something a little desperate. I didn’t know her very well-I’d figured Barney marrying a showgirl was trouble, him being on the rebound from Pearl, his first wife, who I’d liked very much. So I’d resented Cathy, I guess, and never really gave her a chance.
But I could see, tonight, in this smoky gin mill, she really loved the mug. I could also see something was deeply bothering her, where he was concerned.
Barney looked at her, movie-star pretty with her perfect pageboy and smart little blue dress, and it was clear he loved her too. “Cathy’s turned down two movie roles, Nate, just so she can travel around with me. This war-plant tour’s going to mean hitting five, six, sometimes seven plants a day. And we’ll be doing War-Bond rallies and blood-bank drives… I don’t mind, of course-we both know how the boys are suffering in those jungle islands, how bad they need guns and ammo.”
He’d do fine on the “Buy Bonds” circuit.
I said, “How long will you be in town, Barney?”
“It’s an extended furlough. At least a month. And this’ll be our home base, after we start the tour.” He smiled at Cathy and squeezed her hand. She had on an aluminum bracelet he’d given her fashioned from a section of a Jap Zero.
I said, “Remember D’Angelo? He’s here in town.”
Barney’s smile disappeared. “I know. I had Ben invite him here tonight, but he didn’t show.”
“He lost a leg, you know.”
“He’s one up on Watkins,” Barney said. “He lost both of his.”
“Damn. Where is he?”
“San Diego. I stopped in on him. Still in the hospital, but he’s doing pretty good.”
“I want his address.”
“Sure. Those two Army boys pulled through okay; I’ve got their addresses, too, if you want ’em.”
“You wouldn’t know if Monawk had any family, would you?”
He shook his head; his expression was morose. “I checked. No immediate family, anyway.”
I just sat there. The Mills Brothers were singing “Paper Doll” on the jukebox now, which somebody seemed to have turned down.
He said, “I’m going out to Kensington and see D’Angelo soon as I can.”
“He’s getting a raw deal in the papers, you know.”
“No, I didn’t,” Barney said, sitting up.
I explained that D’Angelo had been exchanging love letters with Estelle Carey; Barney knew of the Carey killing-apparently it had been getting some national play.
“They’re spreading his love letters all over the damn papers?” Barney said. “The lousy bastards!”
“One of the guilty parties is standing right over there.”
“Davis, you mean?”
“That’s him. The man with the purple badge of courage on his jaw.”
“How’d he get that?”
“He earned it.”
“You?”
“Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
“Fuckin’ A told,” Barney said, and slid out of the booth and, with aid of his voodoo cane, hobbled over to Davis, and started reading him off, from asshole to appetite. It was a joy to behold.
I slid out and went over and sat by Cathy. I said, “What’s the matter, honey?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re worried about that little schmuck, aren’t you?”
Her mouth tightened. Then she nodded.
“Why?” I asked.
“He’s very sick, Nate. His malaria is flaring up something awful. Chills and fever. And he’s having trouble sleeping, and when he does sleep he has nightmares.”
Familiar story.
“Hell,” I said. “He looks fine. Look at these dark circles under my eyes. He doesn’t even have one.”