“To see the wife?”
“Yes, and to check in with the Defense Health regional office there. I’m on a swing where I’m spending a few days at each of our regional offices-there’s twelve of ’em, from Boston to San Francisco-giving this co-op workshop with the FBI.”
“Gee, do they have VD in Cleveland now? That place is really getting up to date.”
“Sure there’s VD. It takes the proper stamp out of your ration book to get it, however.”
“Which reminds me,” I said, standing, throwing my napkin down. “I got to walk over to the courthouse and get mine.”
“VD?”
“Ration book.”
He shrugged, stood, reached for the bill. “You’re fighting the battle of the home front, now, Nate.”
“Ain’t we all,” I said, and plucked the bill from his hands. “This is my treat. Consider it a payoff.”
“When in Rome.”
He walked out on the street with me; the snow had let up, but the wind was blowing it around, so it didn’t make much difference.
“You take care of yourself,” he told me.
“Sure, kid.”
He looked at me carefully. “Are you getting any sleep?”
“Some.”
“You look like hell.”
“You look like shit.”
“No wonder we can’t get laid,” he said, and walked off.
An hour later, ration book in my billfold, I sat in my office, and started making phone calls, working my way down a list of credit checks that Sapperstein had left on my desk. Gladys came in and asked me if I’d like some coffee. I said, sure-blonde and sweet. She said, huh? And I explained that was G.I. for sugar and cream, and now I was sipping it, between calls, slouched comfortably in my swivel chair, as the phone rang.
“A-1 Detective Agency,” I said, for the first time in some while.
“Heller?”
It was a hoarse, familiar voice, but I couldn’t place it.
“Speaking.”
“This is Louis Campagna.”
An old chill went up my spine. I sat up.
“Hello, Louie.”
“You did pretty good over there.”
“Where?”
“Over there with those Jap bastards. You did pretty good. Frank said to tell you he was proud of ya. We’re glad you’re back safe and sound and everything.”
“Well, uh, thank you, Louie.”
Silence.
Which he finally broke: “Safe and sound is a nice way to be.”
“It sure is.”
“You got in the papers your first day back, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. How ’bout that?”
“How did you manage that, Heller?”
“Just one of those things. Drury happened to be in my office when he got the Carey call. He was welcoming me back. We were on the pickpocket detail together, you know, in the old days.”
Silence.
“So I went along,” I said. “I knew Estelle, you know.”
“Yeah, we know. That was an awful thing that happened to her.”
I tried to find hidden meaning or menace in the voice; I couldn’t quite.
“Awful thing,” I agreed.
“You ought to stay out of that.”
“The investigation, you mean.”
“Yeah.”
“I have an interest in who killed Estelle, Louie. But I’ll leave that to Drury.”
“That’s smart.”
“I can’t seem to make myself buy that Frank had anything to do with it.”
Silence.
“It just wasn’t his style,” I said.
Silence.
Then he said: “Frank may want to see you.”
“That might not be a good idea. The federal prosecutor knows that Frank and I have met from time to time. I’m going to be questioned about it.”
Silence.
“But you might tell Frank that I have a little medical problem left over from the war. I got amnesia over there.”
“Meaning you forget things.”
“That’s exactly right, Louie.”
“That’s a healthy sickness to have. Frank will like hearing that. Keep us informed as to the G’s interest in you.” By G he meant government. “Get a pencil.”
I got a pencil.
He gave me a phone number.
“Is this a number I can reach you at?” I asked, trying to understand what this was about.
“The party at that number can reach me,” he said. “Reach them, and I’ll reach you.”
And a click in my ear said good-bye.
I should’ve been shaken by the call; instead, I felt oddly reassured. Like the Berghoff, Campagna hadn’t changed much. Another Chicago fixture, and-judging by the black-market talk in the papers, “meat-legging” in particular being attributed to the Nitti Outfit-one unaffected by rationing.
I sipped the sweet creamy coffee, made another credit-check call.
Shortly after three, somebody knocked at my door. A crisp, hard, single knock.
“It’s open,” I said.
A Marine sergeant stepped inside, shut the door behind him. He was about forty, wore pressed blue trousers, khaki shirt, necktie and campaign hat. The shine of his shoes reflected the overhead light. He stood board-straight, not at attention, not even at parade rest, but his bearing strictly military and intimidating as all hell, anyway.
“Private Heller?” he said, taking off the hat. He had something in his other hand, too; a small dark blue box.
“Yes,” I said, standing. He looked familiar. Who was this guy?
He marched over to the desk. “I tried to call before coming, but your line was busy.”
“Uh, yes, sorry. Use the phone a lot in my line of work…hey, I know you. You’re my recruiting sergeant. You’re my goddamn recruiting sergeant.”
I came around the desk and extended my hand; he accepted it, shifting the hat to the hand holding the little box. His smile was as tight as his grip.
“Welcome home, Private,” he said.
“What brings you here, Sergeant?”
He handed me the small square box, the corners of which were rounded off. “It is my honor to present you this, Private Heller.”
I opened the little box, half expecting to find a watch inside. Instead I found a medal. A ribboned star of bronze at the center of which a laurel wreath encircled a small silver star.
“That’s your Silver Star, Private. For gallantry in action. Congratulations.”
“I…well, thank you. I, uh…shit. I don’t know, Sergeant. I feel funny about this.”
“Funny?”
“I don’t feel I did anything worthy of a medal. I did what I had to and that’s all. Only medal I feel comfortable wearing is this.” I pointed with a thumb to the Ruptured Duck on my suitcoat lapel. “I did what I had to. But getting medals for killing people, I don’t know about.”
His mouth was a thin straight line that words miraculously squeezed out of: “Private, the Marine Corps is fucked up in many ways. But one way in which it ain’t fucked up is it don’t give out medals for killin’ people. It gives out medals for savin’ people, which is what you and Corporal Ross did over in that hellhole. So if I was you, I would not have nothing but pride for this here medal.”
I smiled at the tough old bird. Old? Three years older than me, probably. Not that that made him young. Had he served in the first war? He’d have been a kid. But then a lot of Marines were.
Anyway, I offered my hand for him to shake again; he did.
“Thank you, Sergeant. I appreciate your words.”
He gave me another tight smile and turned to go; he was at the door when I called out to him.
“Sergeant?”
“Private.”
“Would you happen to know if one of my buddies from B company is back in town? He was in that same hellhole I was.”
“Would you be referrin’ to Private D’Angelo?”
Another chill shot up my spine; a newer one than the Campagna variety.
“That’s right. Is he back?”
He nodded. “Yes he is. He’s a brave young man, too. I delivered a bronze star to him this morning.”
“I’d like to visit him.”
The sergeants mouth twitched; that was his shrug. “I can give you his address, if you like.”
D’Angelo was living with his aunt and uncle in Kensington, a tiny Italian community at the far south end of the city, right outside of Pullman, just west of Cottage Grove. I took the Illinois Central commuter line out there, passing the Pullman plant where my father had once worked, and Electromotive, both doing war work now, and among Eliot’s VD target areas. As the train passed 103rd Street I could see the smokestacks of steel mills against the sky. I sat on the train thinking about unions, thinking about what the unions had meant to my father, about what my father thought the union idea meant, and what sometimes that idea still meant, but how more often greedy bastards like Bioff and Browne and Dean and Nitti and Ricca and Campagna and various Capones and so many others perverted it into just another racket. Is that what we fought to preserve, D’Angelo and Barney and me?