Well, in 1898, when the United States of America was suffering heavy economic losses in Cuba due to revolutions and guerrilla warfare and garrisoned Spanish towns, when the United States was simultaneously beginning to feel its oats in the Western Hemisphere and recognizing the importance of Cuba to Central America where a canal was being planned, two things happened: William Randolph Hearst published a letter from a Spanish minister in Washington, DC, written to a friend in Cuba and expressing contempt for President McKinley; and the United States battleship Maine was sunk in Havana harbor. Well, you know how it is with Cuba; one thing always leads to another. It wasn’t until April 24 that Spain officially declared war, at which time the American Congress replied by stating the two countries had been at war since April 21.
The Happy Kids enlisted as a group under W.R. Shafter and were part of the 17,000 US troops who landed in Cuba and began a march on Santiago. Considering the fact that there had been twenty-three boys in the social and athletic club, considering also how badly trained and poorly equipped the troops were, it was something of a miracle that The Happy Kids all survived the heavy fighting at Siboney and El Canay. None of the group was killed and only one man was wounded, a boy named Billy Winslow who took a Spanish slug in his calf. The bullet embedded in his leg enabled him in later years to predict accurately the kind of weather that could be expected on any given day in New Essex and the surrounding towns. This stunt made him very popular with the ladies and earned the respect and admiration of a girl named Janice Terrill, one of the prettiest girls in town, who— it was reputed—allowed young Billy to remove her petticoat and assorted sundry undergarments in the back room of the store one rainy afternoon he had predicted. They were married six months later.
As a matter of fact, of the twenty-three Happy Kids who survived the invasion of Cuba and the march through Siboney and El Canay, twenty were married by the turn of the century, and the remaining three—including George Nelson Lasser—were married shortly thereafter.
“What kind of a soldier was he?” Carella asked.
“Georgie? Same as the rest of us. Inexperienced, young, full of pepper. We’re lucky we all didn’t get our brains blown out.”
“What rank did he hold?”
“Private, first class.”
“Did he come right back to New Essex after he was discharged?”
“Yes.”
“What did he do?”
“Odd jobs. I guess he was trying to make up his mind. He always was an ambitious fellow, Georgie. I guess that was why he married Estelle. That was in 1904. January it was, matter of fact. That’s funny, isn’t it?”
“How do you mean?” Hawes asked.
“Well,” Maily said, “he was married in January 1904, and here it is January again, sixty years later, and, well, he’s been killed. That’s pretty funny.”
“Peter don’t mean funny to laugh at,” Ostereich said, “He means strange.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Maily said. “I mean strange.”
“What did George Lasser’s ambition have to do with marrying the woman he did?” Carella asked.
“Estelle? Well, she was an actress, you know.”
“What was her full name?”
“Estelle Valentine,” Wye said. “I think that was her stage name, though. Isn’t that right, Peter?”
“That’s right,” Maily said. “Matter of fact, I don’t think I ever knew her real name.”
“A Russian name,” Ostereich said. “She’s a Russian, I think.”
“Have you ever met her?” Wye asked.
“Yes,” Carella said.
“Then you know she’s crazy, huh?”
“She seemed…well…” Carella shrugged.
“Oh, she’s nutty as a fruitcake, all right,” Ostereich said.
“All actresses are nutty,” Maily said.
“Yes, but she wasn’t even a good actress,” Wye said. “Good ones may have a right to be a little nuts, though I’m not even sure of that. But bad ones? No right at all.”
“I still don’t see what marrying her had to do with ambition,” Carella said.
“Well, she must have seemed pretty important to Georgie. He met her when she came here to New Essex in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, do you know that one?”
“No,” Carella said.
“Probably before your time,” Maily said. “Ethel Barrymore played it in 1901. Well, Estelle Valentine wasn’t no Ethel Barrymore, believe me, but she came to New Essex anyway in a road company—must have opened here around Christmas of 1903, I guess, over at the New Essex Playhouse. It’s a movie theater now. Everything changes. Georgie fell in love with her right off. She was a pretty little thing. I got to admit that. They got married…well, almost immediately.”
“Sixty years ago,” Carella said.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“The son seems to be in his forties,” Carella said.
“Tony Lasser? Yes, that’s right. He came late. Neither of the two wanted children. Estelle always talked about going back to the stage and Georgie always had his big plans. Tony came as something of a surprise. They were neither of them exactly grassy green when he was born. You ask me, that’s what finally sent Estelle off her rocker.”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Carella said.
“What’s that?”
“George Lasser was a janitor.”
“That’s right,” Maily said.
“These ambitions you keep talking about, these plans of his…”
“Oh, don’t think Estelle didn’t throw that up to him all the time,” Ostereich said. “You know, the old baloney. I gave up my career for you, and what did I get in return? A janitor!”
“Georgie always had things going for him, though,” Wye said. “In the Army he always had something to sell, either chickens he’d picked up in the farmhouses, or souvenir pistols, or flags—always something. Once even a string of whores he rounded up someplace.” Wye chuckled with the memory.
“Well, even when we got back here to town,” Ostereich said, “how about that? The dances he used to run over at the Republican Club, and the boat ride he dreamed up. Georgie was always trying to think up ways to make a buck. Very ambitious, he was.”
“But then he became a janitor, right?” Carella said. “He forgot all about his ambitions, is that it?”
“Actually, he was more than just a janitor,” Maily said.
“Yes? What was he?” Carella asked.
“Well, what I mean to say is that he still had other little things going for him.”
“Like what?”
“Like the wood. He used to go out cutting trees here in the woods and carry them into the city in his truck. Then he got some colored fellow to chop them up for him, and he sold them to the tenants in his building. Turned a pretty penny that way.”
“What else did he have going for him?” Carella asked.
“Well…” Maily said.
“Yes?”
“Well, just the wood, that’s all,” Maily said, and he glanced at the other men.
“Sir, what else did George Lasser have going for him?”
“Nothing,” Maily said.
“You said he was an ambitious man.”
“Yes, because of the wood,” Maily said. “Because of his selling the wood. That was very ambitious. After all, he was an old man. Not every man his age would—”
“Sir,” Carella said, “if I heard you correctly, you told us that George Lasser was more than just a janitor and you said he had other little things going for him. You said things, sir. Plural. Now what else did he have going for him besides the wood business?”