I found a smaller screwdriver and took out three screws. The plaque swiveled down, hanging by the single bottom right screw, as a small piece of paper fell to the table. I picked it up and read five rows of numbers, printed in a neat, precise hand.
92221166
09137422
32290664
71910900
230933
If I hadn't been sitting down, you could have knocked me over with that slip of paper. I had no idea what the first four numbers were, but I knew the last one by heart. It was the main phone number of the Hotel St. George in Algiers. General Eisenhower's headquarters.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I replaced the plaque and put Hutton's tools back where I'd found them. I felt sorry for the kid. I was sure he had been dragged into this by Andrews to get Rocko off his back, and had only been doing what he was told. This, clearly, had been his world: wires and gizmos, radios and transceivers, the stuff of colorful Popular Mechanics covers. A page that had fallen out of one of the magazines lay at my feet. It was headlined RADIO GOES TO WAR! Problem was, it didn't always come home.
"You!"
I swiveled in my seat to see a finger pointed at me. At the other end was Captain Stanton, his red hair no match for the color rising up from his neck.
"Stand up, goddamn it," he said. "Now!"
I wasn't as worried about the finger pointed at me as I was about the carbine held by the same MP who had kept me out of the Code Section. It wasn't at port arms anymore.
"Sure thing," I said, standing up, keeping the piece of paper folded in the palm of my hand. "What's the problem, sir?"
I placed my hand on my hip, as if my back were sore, slipping the paper into my belt. The MP got nervous, stepping forward and motioning "hands up" with the carbine.
"Hold on, fellas," I said, reaching for the sky. "We're all friends here, right?"
Neither of them wanted to be my pal. The MP held the carbine up to my neck as he took my. 45 from the holster then shoved me out of the tent.
"What's going on?" I asked, looking around for a friendly face.
"You're not asking the questions here, Boyle, so shut up," Stanton growled.
"Actually, I am, Captain. I'm here from HQ with some questions-"
"Take the wind out of his sails," Stanton ordered.
The MP moved his carbine and whacked me in the stomach with the butt, high, in just the right spot to send me to my knees sucking air and watching little starry lights dance before my eyes. I took heaving, gasping breaths that didn't seem to carry any oxygen into my lungs. I had to admire his technique. He'd used the corner of the wooden butt, knocking the wind out of me without breaking a rib. A billy club was better for this move, but he was doing the best he could with what he had.
My breathing calmed down and I was able to lift my head in time to catch a view of Stanton's backside as he trudged off to the Code Section.
"You… a… cop?" I asked, needing a few gasps to get the words out.
"Yeah. Patrolman, Detroit. Don't tell me-"
"Detective. Boston."
"Sorry, Lieutenant," he said, helping me up. "If you had your shield you could've tinned me back there."
"You bring yours with you?"
"Yep. Here, take a look." He pulled out a bright silver badge, Detroit police all right. "Got me out of trouble in Norfolk before we shipped out, and I even got a ride from a French flic in Oran one night. I was drunk as a skunk."
"Good to hear that cops stick together the world over," I said.
"Yeah, well, sorry I had to put you on your knees. You OK now?"
"I think so. What are you supposed to do with me?"
"Watch you until a Major Elliott gets here. Come on, let's get out of the sun and take a load off." He led me by the arm-that insistent yet inconspicuous cop grip that left no doubt who was in charge-into the shade of the Message Section. We sat on folding wooden chairs inside, our backs to the rest of the tent. His chair creaked under his weight, but held. He tossed his helmet onto the ground and brushed back his brown hair. He had blue eyes, broad cheekbones, and a nose that looked like it had been broken at least once.
"Smoke?" He offered a Lucky from his pack. I shook my head.
"So what's your name, Patrolman?" I asked.
"Miecznikowski. You can call me Mike."
"Billy Boyle, and you can forget the lieutenant stuff. When there's no one around, who cares." I stuck out my hand and he shook it.
"You look young for a detective," he said, squinting at me through rising smoke as he lit up.
"I made the grade right before Pearl Harbor. Boston PD is a family business."
"Your old man?"
"Yeah, and uncle too, plus a few cousins."
"Not bad, Billy. You like it, being in the family business?"
"It's all I ever wanted to be. I grew up watching the men in my family carry badges like yours. It's all I know really." It occurred to me that there was a big difference between wanting to be something and becoming something because it was all you knew. Maybe I did want it, like Mike wanted it, all on his own.
"It's good work, especially for us Poles and you Irish. Jobs don't come so easy when you got too many c's and z's in your name," he said.
"Or an O in front of it," I said.
"Can you imagine a half Polack half Mick? O'Chmielewski? He'd starve to death before he ever got work!"
We laughed and swapped stories of walking the beat, desk sergeants, and run-ins with politicians and sons of the high and mighty who ran our towns. Things weren't that different in the Motor City, except that Mike didn't have a bunch of relatives to pull him up the ladder. He was a couple of years older than me and still hoofing it in his bluecoat. Or was.
"I work with a Polish guy," I said. "Talks like an Englishman but he's a Polish baron or something."
"A Szlachta, one of the Polish nobility. My old man used to tell us stories of the old knights and their battles. Nothing like this war, that's for damn sure."
"Kaz lost his whole family in Poland."
"That's tough. Fuckin' Germans. Yet we get along fine with them in Detroit, used to go to their church before we got our own built.
Something about the old country must make them nuts. What 's your pal's full name?"
"Piotr Augustus Kazimierz," I said, giving it the full treatment.
"Don't know the family," Mike said, after giving it some thought. "Say pozdrowienia to him for me. Tell him to settle in Detroit when the war's over. We got a nice neighborhood-Poletown, they call it."
"I'll tell him," I said, smiling at the thought of Kaz settling down in Poletown.
"Gotta hand it to you Irish," Mike said. "You made your own place in Boston when you were turned out everywhere else. It's good to have your own people running things instead of being run, ain't it?" He fieldstripped what was left of his Lucky and let the shreds of tobacco drop through his fingers.
"Yeah. That why you brought your shield with you? To stay connected with your own people?"
"Never thought about it really. Just seemed like the logical thing to do. Something to hang on to, you know? To remember what life used to be like, back when I took everything for granted."
I understood what Mike meant. More than he could realize. Having lost all memory of my life, rediscovering it was like seeing it all for the first time, a new and gleaming, shiny thing full of promise, but distant now, unattainable. He was hanging on to his own former life, his shield a talisman of things past, a promise of a future.
"I know" was all I said. It was too much to explain, too much to put into words. But our eyes locked for a second, and I said it again, so he'd realize I understood. "I know."