Glory Boys (22 page)

‘Thank you.’

‘Your hat.’

‘Huh?’

‘Your hat. You can leave it with me.’

‘That’s OK, I don’t mind…’ Hennessey tailed off. The girl took names and collected hats. That was her job and she had a signboard to prove it. He took off his hat and handed it over.

Abe watched the storekeeper enter the restaurant.

‘Hey, Hen,’ said the airman.

‘Hey, Captain. Real nice to see you again. Unexpected, but nice.’

Abe nodded. ‘You want to eat?’

‘Uh, I’m fine really.’

‘You’re going to need to eat. I’ve been here a while and I’ve had all the food I can get down.’

‘Yeah, sorry. Train was late.’

‘I know.’

A waiter came over and Hennessey ordered. The waiter left.

‘Well?’ It was the storekeeper who spoke.

‘I’m in.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m in, Hen. They’ve taken me in.’

‘They? You mean…?’

Abe nodded. ‘I’m flying booze for them. I’m about to start guarding their shipping fleet against the Coastguard. They’re buying me a plane. A big one. A twenty-thousand-dollar one. They trust me. I’m in.’

He spoke clearly, but there was a flicker in his face. He’d never been sure about doing as Hennessey had asked, but this was his most decisive step yet. Not even his two and a half days in a Miami police cell had the significance of what he was doing now. The storekeeper heard the words, but he read the flicker too. He leaned in for confirmation.

‘You’re in and you’re on our side?’

‘Yes. I didn’t want to promise anything earlier, because I didn’t know if I’d even get this far. Not only that, it was better if you and everyone in Independence forgot about me, or at least thought I was a bum.’

‘Brad Lundmark told me about the booze. I didn’t know what to think.’

‘That I was a liquor smuggler. How come you didn’t think that?’

‘I couldn’t see it, Captain. I just couldn’t see it.’

‘Yeah … good old Brad. Nobody else has quite the same thirst for getting a place tidy.’

Hennessey stared at the airman. Even now, ten days on, Abe’s face bore the marks of his beating in the police cells. His cheeks and forehead had mostly healed, but they were still puckered in small white and red scars and his upper lip was still decorated in tints of black, purple and yellow.

‘You say they trust you. What did it take to get them to do that?’

‘It was harder than I thought. I started out flying booze for them, but that was it. I saw no distance into the organisation and as far as I could see they intended to keep things that way. So then I started telling the Coastguard where they could pick up some boats, and things changed. They got their police friends to kick me around a bit, to see if I’d squeal. I didn’t. And that was that. They needed me. They’d tested me. They decided to trust me.’

Hennessey whistled softly out, but kept quiet as a waiter brought him crab-cakes and a plateful of fried potatoes.

‘You couldn’t have been sure the police were in their pay.’

‘No, not sure.’

‘It was Brad Lundmark who persuaded us to come to you. He was right. We were lucky.’

‘He’s a good kid.’

‘Do you know what you hope to accomplish? One man against an outfit the size of Marion?’

‘No, but they think I’m on their side. That makes them vulnerable. And it’s like combat. It’s all a question of positioning. Positioning and aim. We hold fire until we find their weak spot. Then we hit it. Always the same thing in the same order. Prepare. Observe. Manoeuvre. Destroy.’

‘And their weak spot?’

Abe grinned. ‘They’re criminals. They’re operating one giant criminal conspiracy. That’s against the law, Hen.’

Hennessey sounded disappointed. ‘They’ve bought the cops, Captain. County and state. Federal enforcement is the same. Just as bad or worse. The Coastguard seems to be clean, though they have their rotten crews of course. But however many boats they intercept, there are always more coming. And the Coastguard have no jurisdiction inland.’

‘OK. What d’you say we use a law enforcement organisation which is totally untouched by their money? A federal organisation which is one hundred per cent clean. Which has the resources and the competence and the will to root out and destroy every element of the conspiracy?’

Hen shook his head. ‘It doesn’t exist. We’ve tried. We’ve done everything, we –’

Abe interrupted him by slipping a newspaper clipping across the table. ‘While I was making up my mind whether to help, one of the main difficulties I saw was how we could ever win if the law was rotten. Then I saw this. I’ve checked it out, Hen. From what I can make out, this thing looks like it’ll go all the way.’

The storekeeper read the clipping, then read it again. As he read, he smiled. The smile grew wider and wider, bigger and bigger, until it broke out into a deep contented chuckle.

‘It’s a crazy idea, Captain. But beautiful-crazy not dumb-crazy.’

Abe took the clipping and tore it into pieces.

‘Needs must when the devil rides,’ he said, ‘according to my grandma anyway.’

‘You don’t set yourself easy targets do you, Captain?’

‘I don’t think it was me who set this one, Hen,’ Abe reminded him.

‘D’you know what happens next?’

‘Not really. But I do know I’m going to be airborne a lot. Not only that, but even with the new plane and all, I don’t think they trust me absolutely. I’m not exactly their regular type of hoodlum. I’m making money now, but I don’t throw it around. I don’t drink much. I don’t gamble. I don’t go with girls. At least…’

‘Yes?’ The storekeeper raised an eyebrow.

‘I don’t go with girls unless they’re very pretty and have nice long wings.’ Abe made his habitual joke, but it sounded, even to him, more forced than usual. He remembered a female flier, a bunch of roses, and the way he’d chosen to slice their pretty pink heads off. The ghosts of loneliness hung around that thought too.

‘You need someone on the ground, right?’

‘Right.’

‘You think Brad…?’

‘Heck, he’s kind of connected in to Independence. If it wasn’t for his pa and all…’

‘He worships you, Captain. You’d have loyalty.’

‘He’s too close to Independence, Hen, sorry.’

‘OK, you got any ideas?’

‘Yeah, a couple.’

‘Go ahead. Shoot.’

‘I’m going to need a mechanic. So far, I’ve been looking after Poll and flying at the same time. If I’m airborne more, and I’m flying a bigger, more complex plane, I’m gonna need help. I figure the grease monkey may as well be a guy we can both of us trust.’

‘You want me to find you an airplane mechanic?’ Hennessey’s voice rose in alarm.

‘No, a regular auto mechanic is fine. I’ll teach him what he needs to know. Just make sure he’s up to the job where engines are concerned.’

‘I know a couple of people, maybe. I’ll check them out.’

‘OK. I’m going to advertise in Jacksonville. Whoever you get, make sure they answer the ad.’

‘You want me to let you know who I’m sending?’

Abe shook his head. ‘Before Poll, I had a Thomas Morse airplane, called Sweet Jemima. She wasn’t so sweet, actually, an ornery little miss who tried to kill me a couple of times. I usually called her Jemmy. Whoever you send, just make sure they mention their Aunt Jemmy.’

‘OK.’

‘And last thing. If I need to get hold of you, I’ll be your Aunt Polly. Just do whatever the old bird asks. Also, you might want to check your yard from time to time. Your aunt might take it into her head to drop messages there.’

‘I’ll look out.’

‘And you need to be able to reach me, but I don’t want you to use the mail or, assuming I get one, the phone.’

‘It’s a long way to holler, Captain.’

‘Where does Mrs Hennessey dry her washing?’

‘Huh? Her laundry? Out in the yard. She’s got a line.’

‘OK, good.’ Abe gave Hennessey instructions about what to do if he needed Abe’s help. ‘And remember, we need to assume that they don’t trust me, they don’t trust you, and that they’re gonna be watching us both.’

‘I got it. You take care, Captain.’

‘Both of us, Hen. We must both of us take care.’

45

‘Miss Hooper,’ proclaimed Larry Ronson, holding up one of the group’s detested files, ‘thou hast erred. Erred greatly. Or, to put it another way, please remove this thing.’

He handed the file back to her.

‘No, Larry. No mistake. It’s your turn. The others are snowed under.’

‘The snow it snoweth every day. I don’t mind taking another of your filthy files, my dear lady. But this one belongs to that man there.’

He pointed to Willard, who looked up.

‘Oh?’

Larry took back the file from Annie and dropped it on Willard’s desk.

‘The well-known and highly religious Association of Irish Rabbis is buying ever more… I don’t know. Torahs. Skullcaps. Candles. Dried fish. Whatever makes an Irish rabbi jump for joy.’

Willard opened the file. It was his old friends at the Association of Orthodox Synagogues. They had another large order for religious materials, the first part of which was due to be shipped soon. He hesitated. The file was dodgy and it was Ronson’s file. What’s more, Willard had a sense that, by bad luck or by some malevolent design, the tough files always came his way. The files with errors in, the files with incompetent counterparts, the ones with documents missing. Perhaps he was wrong about that. But what was certainly true was that, although everyone in the trade finance team worked long hours, Willard’s hours were the longest, the most brutal.

Annie picked up the file and was about to pass it back to Larry, telling him to stop ducking work. But Willard stopped her.

‘No, Annie, that’s all right. I’ve become rather fond of my invisible rabbis. I don’t mind taking this one. You give Larry the next one you’ve got lined up for me.’

Annie frowned, feeling that Ronson had somehow pulled a fast one.

‘You’ve got plenty to do already.’

‘I must be a saint.’

‘Saint Willard of Wall Street,’ said Ronson. ‘I’ll light a candle.’

Willard sat back down, his blood already beating faster in his veins. He knew the feeling. It wasn’t the sudden, explosive excitement of combat, but the moment of silence beforehand. It was the first sight of specks in the sky: the glimpse of a target, a hint of battle.

46

‘He’s a good guy, Captain. Jesus!’ Mason spat on the hangar floor, then brushed the mark into the dirt with his toe. ‘I had a real sweet Lincoln. Wouldn’t start no matter what I did. This guy comes in and fixes it, sweet as a nut.’

‘I’m flying an airplane, not a nut tree.’

Mason wouldn’t quit. ‘It makes a lot of sense to pick someone from the organisation. We like keeping things among friends, especially our most important things. And that includes you, buddy, like it or not.’

Abe said nothing, just turned to the mechanic that Mason had brought. ‘Take your coat off.’

‘Huh?’

‘If you don’t want to get your coat covered in oil, take it off.’

The mechanic, a man with eyes that scraped the ground and big hands twisting uncomfortably in his lap, took his coat off. He wasn’t carrying a gun now, but Abe could see the lines of sweat where a gun-harness had been not so long ago. Abe threw the man an overall.

‘I’ve got an engine here that’s not sounding right. I want you to tell me what’s wrong.’

‘Yah! OK. Sure.’ The mechanic threw Mason a look, which Mason refused to acknowledge.

Abe started up Poll’s engine and let her run. Alongside the regular thunder of her pistons firing, there was a telltale noise of something loose and a perceptible vibration in the engine cowling, different from the normal vibration.

‘OK,’ said Abe. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Huh?’

‘I want you to tell me what’s wrong with the engine.’

The man gestured helplessly. ‘You got it running. You want me to look, you better switch off.’

Abe switched off. The mechanic struggled into the overall which was a couple of sizes too small. He removed the engine cowling quickly enough, then spent fifteen minutes rooting around inside. Abe hated the idea of anyone he didn’t trust with his hands inside Poll’s most personal space, but he forced himself to wait.

‘He’s doing good, huh?’ said Mason. ‘Thorough.’

‘We’ll see.’

Eventually, the mechanic finished. He brought the engine cowling down too hard and it echoed through the hangar with a hollow boom.

‘I reckon you got a problem with your oil. Dirty filter. Here, I took it out.’ He held it out, dripping oil onto the concrete floor.

‘OK, wait outside.’

The man went.

‘Well?’ said Mason.

‘The filter’s clean. I cleaned it this morning.’

‘Cut the guy slack. He’s never even seen an airplane before.’

‘He should have seen an oil filter.’ There was an ugly pause. ‘I need a mechanic, Mason, not one of your heavies holding a monkey wrench instead of a gun.’

‘It’s true though, he fixed my car.’

‘I need a mechanic. A guy who understands engines. You need him too. I can’t fly for you, if my plane isn’t flyable.’

Mason wanted to spit again, but knew Abe didn’t like it. He pursed up his lips and scowled. ‘Who’s next?’

Arnold Hueffer was next. A lean, dark man, with a shock of hair that fell across his eyes like a raven’s wing. He had an olive complexion and quick brown eyes, that suggested his mother wasn’t as Germanic as his surname.

Abe went through the same question and answer routine with Hueffer. Name. Previous employers. Experience. Engines previously worked on. Responsible positions held. Hueffer didn’t have much to boast of. He worked in a small garage in Brunswick. When the owner had retired, Hueffer had bought him out. He worked on any type of engine that drove in through the door. He’d answered the ad because he’d always liked airplanes, the idea of them anyway.

‘OK, Mr Hueffer. I’ve got a problem. Poll here isn’t working quite right. I want you to tell me what’s the matter.’ He threw the overall across to Hueffer, then went over to Poll and started the engine. Hueffer sat in his seat, holding the overall across his lap and listening. After a while, he went up to Poll and listened closer to, keeping the fingertips of his left hand pressed lightly against the cowling. He had left the overalls lying across his seat.