“Yes you will.”
“How?”
“Do you remember that thing I told you which no girl in her right mind would ever tell a man she had gone limp over, about how I called up the man I was engaged to and resigned from the whole idea because you happened to smell so crazy?”
“I thought you just said that to get me to kiss you.”
“His name was Lou Amjac and you happen to be right.
“You know, you weren’t attracted to me irrevocably only because I smell this way. Don’t forget I cried like a little, lost tyke the instant I looked at you. Stuff like that is a steam roller for a potential mother.”
“Have you ever done that with another woman? The smell you can’t help, but I don’t think I could stand sharing your sniveling with another woman.”
“Never mind. That’s the kind of stuff that’ll come out after we’re married. What about Lou Amjac?”
“He’s an FBI agent. They are good at their work. I have a whole intuitive thing about how they can help you with that notebook—The Gallant Major’s Gypsy Dream Book.”
“I’m Army Intelligence, baby. We don’t take our laundry to the FBI. Macy’s definitely does not tell Gimbel’s.”
“The way you told it to me, you were Army Intelligence. If the FBI can prove you have something worth going on with, then your side will take you back and you can run the whole thing down yourself.”
“Jesus.”
“Isn’t it worth trying?”
“Well, yeah, but still, I don’t see Lou Amjac going out of his way to help me. After all, you were his girl.”
“He might not be pleasant about it, that’s true, but he’s an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and if you’ve got something in his line, you’re not going to be able to shake him.”
Amjac wasn’t entirely pleasant about Marco. In fact, he was particularly surly. Amjac was a skinny man with watery eyes and when Marco saw them for the first time he had a hot flash of jealousy go through him, feeling that maybe Eugénie Rose was nearsighted and that perhaps when she had first seen this guy she had thought he was crying. Amjac was tall. He had florid skin and sandy hair, freckles all over the backs of his hands, and looked as though he had a tendency to boils on the back of his neck. His hair was fine lanugo and he couldn’t have grown a mustache if he had stayed in bed for a year. He had a jaw like a crocodile and as he sat in Rosie’s small, warm, golden-draped room, which had horrible, large cabbage roses woven into the carpets and ancient northern European brewery posters on all walls, separated by mountain goat heads mounted on stained ash, he looked as though he would be happy to be invited to bite Marco’s right arm off.
When he entered the apartment and had stood staring down, repelled, at Marco, Eugénie Rose had said serenely, “This is Bonny Benny Marco, the chap I was telling you about, Lou. Benny boy, this here is a typical, old-time shamus right out of Black Mask Magazine name of Lou Amjac.”
“Did you bring me all the way over here in the rain just to meet this?” Amjac inquired.
“Is it raining? Yes, I did.”
“What am I supposed to do? Arrest him for impersonating an officer?”
Marco figured it would be better just to let the two old friends chat together.
“Would you like a nice plebeian rye highball, Lou?”
“Plebeian? Your friend is drinking beer right out of the can.”
“Wow, you FBI guys don’t miss a trick, do you?” Eugénie Rose said. “Do you want a rye highball or don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“That’s better. Give me your coat. How is your elbow with the weather changing like this? Now sit down. No. Walk with me to the kitchen whilst I decant. Did your mother get back from Montreal?”
Amjac took off his coat.
“You know, I think if I was right-handed I would have had to quit the Bureau, Rose. I could hardly bend my elbow this afternoon, believe it or not. This Dr. Weiler—you met Abe Weiler, the specialist, didn’t you, Rose?—he may be a good man at certain things—you know what I mean—but I don’t think he even knows where to grope when it comes to arthritis.” He followed her into the tiny kitchen and Marco watched them go, goggle-eyed. “My mother decided to stay over another week,” he could hear Amjac say. “They sell very strong ale up there and since my sister’s husband won’t be home from the road until Monday, why not?”
“Of course, why not?” Rosie’s voice said. “Just make sure she’s out before he’s home, is all. He’d love to punch her right on her sweet little old-lady nose, he told me.”
“Aaaah, that’s a lot of talk,” Amjac said petulantly. “Thanks.” He accepted the stiff highball.
“Are your lads still interested in this and that about the Soviet lads? Spy stuff?”
Amjac jerked his head back toward Marco. “Him?”
“He knows a couple,” she said. They walked back into the living room with Rosie carrying four beer cans at stomach level.
“Can he talk?” Amjac asked.
“He talks beautifully. And, oh Lou, I wish you could smell him!” Amjac grunted and stared hard at Marco who seemed considerably embarrassed. “Just the same I’d like to tell you the story,” Rosie said, “because you are gradually making Major Marco believe that after eleven years of rooming with you at the Academy he has stolen your wife, and as you know the very best in the world that just isn’t the case.”
“So tell!” Amjac snarled.
She told it. From the patrol forward. She went from the Medal of Honor to the nightmares, to Melvin in Wainwright, to the Army hospitals, to Chunjin and Raymond, to Raymond’s mother and Senator Iselin, to Marco’s court-martial project and General Jorgenson’s suicide. They were all quiet after she had finished. Amjac finished his highball in slow sips. “Where’s the notebook?” he asked harshly.
Marco spoke for the first time. “It’s with my gear. At Raymond’s.”
“You think you can remember any of the faces of the men in your dreams?”
“Every man, every face. One woman.”
“And one lieutenant general?”
“With Security service markings.”
“And this Melvin dreamed the same thing?”
“He did. And that man who was sitting beside the lieutenant general is now Raymond Shaw’s house man.”
Amjac stood up. He put his coat on with deliberate movement. “I’ll talk it over with the special agent in charge,” he said. “Where can I reach you?” Marco started to answer but Eugénie Rose interrupted him. “Right here, Louis,” she said brightly. “Any time at all.”
“I live at Raymond Shaw’s,” Marco said quickly, coloring deeply. “Trafalgar eight, eight-eight-eight-one.”
“I cannot believe it,” Amjac said to Rosie. “I simply cannot believe that you could ever turn out to be this kind of hard, cruel girl.” He turned to go. “You never gave a damn about me.”
“Lou!”
He got to the door but he had to turn around. She was staring at him levelly, without much expression.
“You know I cared,” she said. “I know that you know exactly how much I cared.”
He couldn’t hold her stare. He looked away, then looked at the floor.
“With all the girls there are in the world,” she added, “do you think a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor who has been batting around the world most of his life wants to get married? Well, he does, Lou. And so do I. Maybe if you had been able to make up your mind between me and your elbow and your mother, you and I would have been married by now. We’ve been together four years, Lou. Four years. And you can say that I never cared about you and I can only answer that the cold-turkey cure is the only way for you because I have to make sure that you understand that there is only Ben; that it is as clear as daylight that Ben is the only man for me. Someday, if you keep playing the delaying game, and I guess you will, some girl may pay you out on a slow rope, then cast you adrift miles and miles away from shore and you’ll know that my way—this hard, cruel way you called it—is the way that leaves the fewest scars. Now stop sulking and tell me. Are you going to help us or not?”