"Major, he can't be right, can he?" I asked. Harding didn't say a word. I wanted to be reassured that we were the good guys, not pawns in some power play that let killers and thieves stay on top while guys like Colonel Baril rotted in jail and Georgie and Jerome did the same in the ground. I drove as slowly as I could toward the setting sun as we passed a column of trucks heading out of Algiers. Dust choked the road as the deuce and a halfs, crammed with GIs, headed for the front. I hoped none of them had someone along explaining the intricacies of French politics. It would confuse things when the bullets started flying.
The last truck rolled by and we drove out of the dust, into the city.
A cool breeze came off the water as I turned down a side street toward the hotel. I slowed at a curve and glanced back at Kaz to be sure he was all right. The windscreen cracked in front of me as I heard a sharp noise and felt something tug at my sleeve. Harding was pulling out his automatic and saying something I couldn't understand. I tried to take in what was happening. I heard the noise again, a shot. I swerved hard to the right, driving down an alley between two buildings. At the end of a driveway I saw a wooden gate between two houses and I floored it. I had no plans to be caught in a dead-end ambush. Hot steam was gushing from the engine and pouring over the shattered windshield as we headed for the gate.
"Hang on!" I yelled as we hit the gate with a thud and it toppled off its hinges. The jeep went over it with a jolt that made Kaz yell, so I knew he was still alive. I drove like a maniac until we reached the next street with two solid rows of houses between the shooter and us. Steam and water hissed out of the engine and there were shards of glass all over the floorboards.
"Kaz, are you all right?" I asked.
"Yes, Billy," he said, grasping his bad arm and gritting his teeth. He looked around as Harding jumped out, holstered his automatic, and pulled a Thompson from under the seat. I was still gripping the steering wheel. I felt the blood drain from my face. The evening was cool but I started to sweat. I looked at the windscreen. A bullet had struck the metal frame where it joined the window, leaving a half-moon hole in the frame and shattered glass inside the jeep. I got up slowly, making sure I wouldn't fall flat on my face. My hands were shaking and my legs felt like jelly.
"Billy," Kaz said, "look at your right shoulder."
There was a neat hole in my Parsons jacket, beneath my lieutenant's bar. Two neat holes, actually, one in and one out, right where the fabric was bunched up at the seam. I stuck my finger in one and wiggled it out the other.
"Damn close," Harding said. "The second shot hit the engine, so he could pick us off when the jeep stopped. Good thinking, Boyle, to take that turn."
A nod was about all I could manage. Someone had tried to kill me. Me, not just any dogface, but me in particular. Me.
"Let's go," Harding said. "We can hoof it to the hotel. We're not hanging around here." He grabbed his gear and I took the keys. I helped Kaz out of the back seat and we followed Harding down the road. I looked back to see a bunch of Arab kids appear from behind houses and doors and gather around the jeep, which was still leaking steam and water. I should've taken the jack. Those tires would be history as soon as we turned the corner. It was kind of comforting, sort of like being back home, in the wrong neighborhood.
As we took a left and came to the next intersection, Harding held up his hand. We stopped. Across the street, the same street we had been driving down, there was a low stone wall encircling a small park. Inside was a water fountain, palm trees, and a bunch of green, shady plants, with nice chalk-white benches to sit on. Very peaceful. At the corner, the wall made a right angle and then there was an entrance from the street. We followed Harding at a trot as he made for it. In the distance I could hear someone laying on the jeep's horn. Kids will be kids. Kaz and I caught up as Harding pointed the Thompson over the wall, glancing in each direction.
"No one home," he said. "This was where he hid. Look at this." He pointed to some branches that had recently been snapped. I looked down on the other side of the wall and could see where the ground had been scuffed up.
"Yep," I said. "He had a clear line of fire once he got those branches out of the way. He had us in his sights as soon as we turned the corner. He should have waited a few seconds longer for a better shot."
"Billy," Kaz said, "please do not offer these hints to anyone. I have no wish to give this renegade Vichy a second chance."
"This was no fascist renegade, Kaz," I said as I ran my hand over the ground.
"How do you know that?" he asked. "There are still many Vichy French who do not wish to fight for the Allies."
"We did expect some trouble when we agreed to the cease-fire,'' Harding said. "The French troops still have weapons. One of them with a grudge could have slipped out, taken a potshot, and then gone back to his barracks."
"How many times has that happened?"
"None that I know of," admitted Harding. "But with thousands of
French soldiers in this city who were shooting at us a day ago, any- thing's possible."
"Well," I said, "how many soldiers in this war take away their shell casings after a firefight?" I could see Kaz's eyes widen. Harding looked at the bare ground where the shooter had been, still puzzled.
"It's a professional habit. Not of soldiers but of hired killers," I said. "Hit men don't leave anything behind to link them to the murder."
"Murder? In the middle of a war?" Harding asked.
"Best time for it," I said. "Now let's get some food."
Chapter Fourteen
We ate in a mess tent outside the hotel as the sun set and breezes coming off the Mediterranean cooled the evening air. I wolfed down beef stew and rye bread until I had caught up with my two missed meals. Looking up at the palm fronds swaying in the slight wind I remembered how they had looked from the roof of the hotel. Was that only last night? Last night Joe Casselli and Jerome Dupree had both been alive. Had either of them realized it would be their final night on earth? Had they felt the cool breezes before they died?
Most murders are unfair and unequal struggles. A few you can make sense of, but usually it's greed or brutality that causes someone to kill another human being, whether out of sudden rage or studied calculation. There was something much more than unfair about Joe and Jerome's murders. Something was very wrong, upside down, as if the rules had suddenly changed and no one had bothered to tell them. In a war, there's enough chance for a guy to get killed, even a supply sergeant or a college kid caught up in the thrill of plots and revolts. But to be murdered for what? A notebook? Drugs? In a hospital, where they had the right to feel safe and secure? It wasn't right. If they had been killed in the air raid, it would have part of the deal, part of the war. But they had lived through that, only to become victims of some two-bit drug racketeers.
A gust of wind kicked up and the palm trees swished loudly for a few seconds before the fronds dropped silently back in place. I started to wonder how I would know if this were my last night alive, and what I would do differently if I did. Lots of thoughts passed through my mind, but they all seemed petty and childish. Not to say lewd. Maybe it's better not to know, and to go on doing whatever seems important.
That was all the deep thinking I had time for. Harding had organized a room for the three of us, on account of Kaz's wound and the fact that we'd be sitting ducks sleeping in a hallway, even inside the headquarters hotel. Kaz got the bed, Harding took the couch, and I fell asleep in my boots on top of a sleeping bag on the floor, in front of the door. Like a good guard dog.