Death's Door (44 page)

“Bet you’re surprised to see me, Billy,” Tree said, finally breaking his silence. He didn’t smile, but one eyebrow arched slightly, a gesture of friendship, perhaps.

“Surprised you’re still in the army,” I said, wary of Tree’s intent. Kaz kept silent, his eyes watching the publican as he went about his business, then drifting in Tree’s direction.

“You’re Polish,” Tree said to Kaz. He was making small talk that seemed ridiculous in the circumstances. I figured since he wanted to see me, I’d wait until he was ready to spill. Meanwhile, I watched the two of them size each other up.

“Yes,” said Kaz. “And I understand you were a colleague of Billy’s in Boston.”

“Colleague? I guess you could call it that, Lieutenant. You a colleague of Billy’s over here now?” There was a challenge in Tree’s words, no matter how lightly he spoke them. Or a warning.

“We work together, yes,” Kaz said, with an air of studied indifference. The two of them were a world apart in all things, except for me. Tree was a Negro; tall and good-looking in a Josh Gibson sort of way. Gibson was a six-foot-plus player for the Homestead Grays, and once I’d called him the black Babe Ruth for his incredible hitting. Tree had then called the Babe the white Josh Gibson, and we’d laughed about it. We’d laughed about a lot of things back then. The foolishness of the adult world, mainly. And now here we were smack in the middle of it.

My friendship with Kaz was different in many ways. He and I’d had a few laughs, sure, and I’d call him my best friend in a heartbeat, but life these days wasn’t all chuckles and mischief. It was about staying alive, and Kaz and I had helped each other out in that department too many times already. With Tree it had been out-and-out sidesplitting guffaws. With Kaz, it was more likely to be a lopsided grin, a few drinks, and then on to the next mission. Over here, you set aside foolishness pretty damn quick.

Small and wiry, sporting steel-rimmed spectacles, Kaz was a good-looking guy himself, if you only looked at one side of his face. On the other side he carried a scar from eye to jawbone, a souvenir from our first case together, and a daily reminder of all he’d lost. I caught Tree staring at it for a second, but he didn’t ask questions.

Tree was poor. Kaz was rich. His British Army uniform was tailor-made, and he wore it well. Tree was wearing a Parsons jacket, outdated since the new M-1943 field jackets replaced them months ago. Probably the way things went in the colored units. A lot like life back in Boston.

“I thought we might have a drink,” Tree said, drumming his fingers on the tabletop and glancing at the floor. “But there’s a shortage of glasses.”

“Listen, Tree,” I said, giving up on waiting for him to explain himself. “I got your message yesterday, and came as soon as I could. I started a five-day leave today and spent my first morning packed into a train from London to come out here and talk to you. I don’t know what the problem is, but you didn’t invite me for drinks. And what the hell happened here anyway?”

“You Yanks happened, that’s what,” the owner said, emptying a dustpan filled with glass shards.

“That’s not fair, Horace,” Tree said. “I’m a Yank too.”

“Don’t mean your lot,” Horace said. “You know that.”

“So there was a brawl or something here,” I said. “Let’s find another pub and have a drink, okay? Maybe that’ll loosen your tongue.”

“Don’t bother yourself,” Horace said, and disappeared behind the bar.

“What does he mean?” Kaz said.

“He means that every damn glass in every damn pub in Hungerford is in the same condition. It wasn’t a brawl. It was a deliberate attack, pure and simple.”

“By Americans?” Kaz said.

“Yeah,” Tree said. “White Americans.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. I could imagine, but I wanted the details.

“You know how the army keeps things segregated,” Tree said. “But I’ll explain for your Polish pal here. Uncle Sam’s got colored units, like mine, but that means they have to double up on everything else, to make sure white folks don’t have to share the same building, transportation, food, or anything with us. Trains, ships, trucks, you name it. Even towns. Hungerford was designated an off-duty town for colored troops back in forty-two.”

“Why?” Kaz asked.

“Women, liquor, politics, it all comes together over here,” Tree said. “Plenty of my fellow American GIs don’t like the idea of seeing us walking out with white girls. Given the lack of female Negroes in England, that’s the only choice we have. And the ladies don’t seem to mind one bit since they weren’t raised to despise my race.”

“There would be fights,” Kaz said.

“Fights and killing, for certain. You see, over here a white man doesn’t have the automatic right to kill a Negro, not like they do in the Deep South. Military justice ain’t much, but it’s better than Alabama justice. So to avoid unpleasantness, the army designates certain towns for whites and others for colored troops. Nothing official, of course. But no white GI has ever had a pass to spend time in Hungerford.” Tree spat out the words, and I saw the humiliation beneath his anger.

“But your unit did?”

“Yeah. First colored troops in the area was a Quartermaster truck company, a few miles west. Then we came along. We’re based outside Hungerford.” Tree lifted his chin as he spoke of his unit, pride evident in how he held himself. No humiliation there.

“Let’s get back to what happened here,” I said, anxious to get to the bottom of this. My leave was ticking away, and I had places to go.

“Well, the army decided that with so many white troops moving into the area, they needed this town for their leaves. Orders came down yesterday. We get Kintbury, a few miles from here. Real small town, not much to do. White troops get Hungerford, starting midnight tonight.”

“Did the colored soldiers break up the pubs because they were angry?” Kaz asked.

“Nope. We like the people here. Not a man among us would cause them harm. At noon today three truckloads of white boys drove into town, made for the three pubs, and took baseball bats to the drinking glasses. All of them. Didn’t touch anything else.”

“Why?” Kaz asked, wrinkling his brow as he tried to work out the logic of it. This was new territory to him, but all too familiar to me.

“So they wouldn’t have to drink from the same glasses as Negroes had,” I said.

CHAPTER TWO

W
E MOVED OUTSIDE
. I needed air, to get away from the broken glass and the downcast look on Horace’s face. I wanted to keep going and leave Tree and his miseries behind, but it was too late for that. Seven years too late.

“Have a seat,” Tree said, pointing to a rough wooden bench set against the whitewashed stone of the Three Crowns Pub. Kaz took the end, hitching up his tailored trousers as he sat. Tree stuffed his hands in his pockets against the chill and leaned forward, elbows at his side. He never liked the cold much. I had a trench coat on over my new Ike jacket, the M-44 service jacket with the short waist, designed by General Eisenhower himself. Nothing but the best for the boys from Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. Kaz, with his Savile Row bespoke dress uniform, looked like the aristocrat he was as he checked his polished shoes. Tree looked like a kid from Beacon Hill’s North Slope. Tough, and braving the cold in a hand-me-down coat. It was odd seeing him here in an English village, outside of a pub that had probably been there a hundred years before the house was built in Boston. Shops lined the street, whitewashed low buildings with slate roofs and colorful signs. Solid brick homes and stately elm trees lined the road, springtime buds showing on the branches. A picture-book English village.

“Why am I here, Tree?” I said as I settled onto the bench, eyes forward to the road. “Is it because of what those GIs did?”

“No. If I called you every time a white man gave me trouble, I’d have run out of nickels long ago. I didn’t even know about that until ten minutes before you showed up. I feel bad for Horace; he’s a decent guy.”

“Anyone report it?”

“No. The local police wouldn’t be able to question anyone on base, and the army doesn’t want any publicity. My guess is that when word reaches the right officer, guys will show up with a wad of cash for each of the pubs. A lot of guys will be happy to chip in for glasses untouched by Negroes.”

“Yeah,” I said. He was right. It would be taken care of quietly, and the insult would go unanswered. “Which base were they from?”

“Take your pick. There’s an air force base over at Greenham Common. More fighter squadrons coming in every day, plus troop transports. The Hundred-and-First Airborne is spread all across Berkshire. One of their regiments is headquartered at Littlecote House, not far out of town,” Tree said, shrugging at the uselessness of conjecture. “Plus other units I don’t even know about. Could have been any of them.”

“What’s your unit?” I asked, curiosity getting the best of me. “Quartermaster?”

“Hell no, Billy,” Tree said. “We’re the Six-Seventeenth Tank Destroyer Battalion. Combat outfit. Used to be an anti-tank battalion with towed thirty-seven millimeter pieces, but now we’re training on the M-Ten. I command a five-man crew, the best in Baker Company, if not the whole damn battalion.” He sat up a little straighter when he said that, and I knew it meant a lot to Tree. Any Negro soldier who rose to the rank of sergeant and got himself into a combat unit had walked a hard road.

“I knew there were Negro units fighting in Italy,” I said, “but I didn’t know there were any tank outfits in England.”

“They got us loading and unloading every damn thing under the sun,” Tree said. “From Liberty ships to deuce-and-a-half trucks. They got us cooking and cleaning, everything but fighting. I’ve been in the army too long to sit out the shooting war humping supplies.”

“If that’s what you want, Tree, I’m glad for you. But what am I doing here? Are you in trouble?”

“If I was in trouble, I’d think twice about you helping me again, Billy. But I know you mean well, and there is someone who needs help.”

“Who?”

“Abraham Smith, my gunner. They got him locked up in Shepton Mallet.”

“For doing what?” I didn’t know where Shepton Mallet was, but the most important thing was to understand what Tree was asking of me. I had the feeling it wasn’t going to be easy.

“For murder. But he didn’t do it.” I looked askance at Tree, unable to disguise my cop’s suspicious nature. “Really, he didn’t.”

“Okay, who didn’t he murder?”

“A constable.”

“They have him for killing an English cop? Then they must have evidence, Tree. What do you think I can do?”

“You’re the one in the justice business, Billy, you tell me,” Tree said. “How about allowing that he’s innocent until proven guilty? How about trusting that I wouldn’t ask if he wasn’t innocent?”

“You know? For certain?”

“I saw him on base that night. And the next morning. He seemed fine, wasn’t acting like he was upset or anything.”

“When and where was the constable killed?”

“Around midnight, they think, three days ago. It was in a village called Chilton Foliat, a couple of miles north.”

“Where’s your base in relation to that?”

“Just south of here,” Tree said, pointing down the main road. “We’re bivouacked in Hungerford Park, some sort of nature reserve.”

“So your gunner could have left after you saw him, and made it up to Chilton Foliat and back, right?”

“True, we’re camped out in the open. But he didn’t. Angry keeps to himself a lot. He’s never skipped out without a pass.”

“Angry?” I said.

“That’s his nickname. Everyone calls him Angry. He’s got a reputation for a short fuse. Been in a few fights, nothing serious, though.”

“So you want me to investigate the charges against your gunner, whose nickname is
Angry
, who could have gone up to Chilton Foliat unnoticed to murder a constable, and who happens to have a reputation for using his fists. Anything else while I’m at it?” I stood up and stared down at Tree, arms folded across my chest, hoping for just one more good reason to walk away. I glanced at Kaz, hoping for some support. He studied his fingernails with great care.

“What proof did you have that I didn’t steal that cash?” Tree stretched his arms out and leaned back on the bench, his long legs crossed as if he were lounging out in front of the Boylston Street station where we used to hang out.

“I knew you didn’t,” I said, letting out a sigh and stuffing my hands in my pockets.

“Like I know Angry didn’t murder anyone. I trust him. Like you trusted me.”

“Billy, there’s one thing you should be aware of,” Kaz said. I’d been conscious of him watching us, trying to figure out what was going on. I hadn’t told him much about Tree, except that I wanted company when I went to see him.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Shepton Mallet,” he said. “I saw mention of it in a report from the Judge Advocate General’s office on the legal background to the Visiting Forces Act.”

“Yeah, I must have missed that one. What did it say?”

“Shepton Mallet is an old, disused British prison that has been turned over to the American government as a military prison and place of execution for servicemen convicted of capital offenses. Five soldiers to date have been hanged at Shepton Mallet.”

“Makes sense that there’d be a few bad apples among the thousands of GIs in England,” I said.

“Yes, but I found it odd that of those five, three were Negro. Are there more Negro bad apples than Caucasian bad apples?”

“All depends on who you ask,” Tree said, rising to face me. “I remember one Boston cop who was sure of it. Heard he came to a bad end, Billy.”

“Basher,” I said, before I could stop myself. “But let’s stick with Angry Smith. Okay, I’ll ask around, see what I can do.”

“That’s it? Ask around?”

“Listen, Tree, I started leave today. I have plans, but I will look into it. The case is only three days old, they’re not going to hang him anytime soon.”

“You’re on leave, that’s perfect. It’ll give you time to talk to folks around here,” he said. For a guy who didn’t like me much, he sure wanted me to stick around. Angry Smith must be one damn good gunner.