Glory Boys

‘Yes… Look, you probably think I’m being absurd, but you don’t think … Look, I don’t even know what I think, but have you ever wondered if there’s anything strange going on at times? You remember that business with the Orthodox Synagogues?’

‘Irish rabbis. That’d be something.’

‘McVeigh threatened me in the elevator. Told me not to ask questions.’

‘He did? He did that? Jesus! Have you told anyone else?’

‘No. I’m not quite sure who I would tell.’

‘There’s Grainger, I suppose. Or Barker.’

‘Yes, but what if they’re in on it too?’

‘In on what?’

‘I’ve no idea. None at all.’

‘Look, you know Powell a little, don’t you? Or at least your pa does?’

‘Father and Powell are Yacht Club buddies, that sort of thing. Trouble is, I don’t really know the man and, in any event, I wouldn’t know what to say.’

Ronson looked at his watch. It was four thirty-five. ‘I trust you’re intending to keep New York’s bootlegging community in proper employment tonight?’

‘Love to, but I’m bursting to get out of the city, to tell the truth. Take a weekend in the country.’

‘The delights of Martha’s Vineyard, eh? Lucky dog.’

Willard smiled. His father owned a thumping big estate facing south over the ocean. What was more, Willard’s four sisters were all going to be there this weekend, with girlfriends in tow. Willard had enjoyed happy hunting with his sisters’ friends in the past, and could think of nothing more welcome in the present. Willard stared at his desk and its cargo of detested manila files.

‘To hell with it,’ he said, feelingly. ‘To hell with everything. If Messrs Grainger, Barker, McVeigh or Powell want me, please tell them to go to hell too.’

Grabbing coat, hat and briefcase, Willard strode for the door.

27

The shop was dim compared with the street outside, but then again since the street outside was a blaze of white dust and air so hot it practically buckled, dim wasn’t a bad way to be.

The kid kicked around at the back of the store, waiting while Hennessey finished serving an old lady customer at the front. The kid was down in the hardware section, fingering the metal pans full of nails, weighing the hammerheads and axe handles. The old lady left the shop. Lundmark approached.

‘Afternoon, Mr Hennessey.’

‘Hey, Brad. Fancy some candy?’

The storekeeper pulled a jar of Brad’s favourite candy from the shelf behind him. The kid looked embarrassed, sticking his hands in his pockets.

‘Oh, gee, no, it’s OK, I didn’t mean to – I didn’t come out with any –’

‘This candy’s a treat between friends. I didn’t mean for you to pay.’

‘Oh, gosh, Mr Hennessey, thanks.’

The old man and the young one went silent as they chewed on the pink and white candy. Brad was still of school age and his mom’s blind eyes didn’t let her earn a living. The two of them lived off the town’s charity and the poorer the town got, the poorer the Lundmarks became.

‘Good candy.’

‘Yeah.’

Hennessey could tell the boy wanted to ask something, but wasn’t sure about doing so. The older man let him take his time. Another customer came in, asked for a bolt of cloth, was told it hadn’t come in yet. The customer left.

‘Say,’ said Brad, who had plucked up his courage, ‘I keep telling Mom it’s time she let me earn a little money. Schooling don’t bother me none, only it don’t pay nothing either.’

‘That’s a problem with it,’ said Hennessey, hoping the boy wasn’t going to ask him for a position.

‘She thinks I ought to become a carpenter like my pa.’

‘He was good with his hands, your pa.’

‘Yeah…’

‘And sometimes you know those things run in the blood.’

‘Yeah…’

‘Only if I’m guessing right, you don’t fancy the carpenting line of work over much.’

‘Not so much.’

Hennessey was more sure now that the boy was going to ask for a job – a request which Hennessey would absolutely have to refuse – and his manner stiffened as he waited.

‘But I reckon you’re right about them things running in the blood, though.’

‘Yes?’

The boy looked up, suddenly bold. ‘Oh say, Mr Hennessey, it ain’t carpenting work I want, it’s mechanics. I am good with my hands, even Captain Rockwell said so. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, really. There are four auto shops in Brunswick now. I’ll bet one of them needs an apprentice around the place. I could come home every Sunday. I wouldn’t need hardly nothing to live off and Ma could have everything else.’

He stopped abruptly and the storekeeper finished for him. ‘Only your ma wants you to stay at home. She doesn’t like the thought of you heading off to Brunswick.’

The kid didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. It was the same all over Independence. Ever since Marion had begun its war of attrition against their neighbours up the hill, the town had been dying. Kids left, not to come back. Businesses folded. Farms went under. Hennessey was an Independence man born and bred, but he couldn’t deny that the kid spoke sense. There was no use in trying to hold the youngsters back. They had their own lives to live.

‘I’ll speak to Sal,’ said Hennessey. ‘I expect I can talk her round.’

‘Gee, would you? Gosh, thanks! And I promise –’

Hennessey raised a hand. ‘No promises, Brad.’ He hesitated. Under the counter, he’d kept a newspaper from a couple of months back. The newspaper had contained an item about the inaugural Miami–Havana mail flight, about Captain Rockwell and his new airfield in the south.

‘Autos. That’s your thing, huh?’

‘Oh sure. You know Captain Rockwell started out as a racing car mechanic. One day, I’d love to do that, but meantime

‘How ’bout airplanes, Brad?’

‘Airplanes?’

The air turned still. The silence turned holy.

Hennessey produced the paper. ‘Now don’t you dare tell your ma I showed you this. It ain’t autos, Brad, but if you don’t mind slumming it, there’s a guy working down in Miami who might have a job for the likes of you.’

He handed over the newspaper. The kid read the article, his eyes shining.

‘Gee, Mr Hennessey, do you really think he’d –?’

‘I’ve no idea. You’d best ask him that yourself. And, listen up, Brad, mind you don’t tell him I said you go see him.’

‘I shouldn’t?’

‘No, son, better not.’

The kid looked back at the newspaper, doubtfully. ‘But, you know Mr Hennessey, Miami’s a whole lot further than Brunswick…’

Hennessey suddenly felt bad about doing what he’d just done. He couldn’t have said why, but he felt like he was a man betraying a trust. He grabbed the tall glass jar of candy, tipped some out into a brown paper bag and thrust the bag over the counter, restoring the jar to its place on the shelf with his free hand.

‘I’ll speak to your ma. I’ll ask her about Brunswick. I won’t say anything about Miami, let alone airplanes. If you choose to jump on the eight o’clock freight train when it slows down just this side of Williams Point and ride it all the way down to Miami, then that wouldn’t really be my business now, would it?’

A couple more customers came into the shop, one of them Jeb Gibbs, a seventy-five-year-old man whose sweet-tempered moonshine whiskey had kept him one of the wealthiest men in town for as long as anyone could remember. Gibbs was a customer Hennessey did a lot to keep sweet. The storekeeper greeted the newcomers and flashed a last glance at Lundmark. The kid had grabbed his bag of candy and stood with it held against his chest like something precious.

‘Williams Point, huh?’ he breathed.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ said the storeman, ‘but no promises.’

The kid left. Hennessey watched him all the way into the dazzle of the street and the deep indigo shadows of the further side. He hadn’t done anything so bad, had he? And if he hadn’t, then how come he felt like such a louse for doing it?

28

The weekend was everything that Willard’s life once used to be and now wasn’t.

Although he carried twelve hours’ worth of paperwork in his briefcase, he touched none of it. Deliberately choosing to ignore the difficulties that hemmed him in, he didn’t think about his debts, didn’t think about Powell Lambert, didn’t think about his future. Instead, he did all those things he had once taken for granted. He played tennis, sailed and swam. He was outgoing, charming and easy. He didn’t ‘score a confirmed hit’, as he expressed it to his eldest sister, Lucinda, but he ‘winged one or two machines, for sure’ – his phrase for petting that stopped just short of the bedroom door.

‘One or two?’ she teased him. ‘You don’t know?’

‘Two then.’

‘Must have been some very slow machines then. Slow and ugly.’

He laughed. ‘Fast and pretty. And exceptionally keen for me to call on them in New York.’

But all too soon the weekend ended. On Sunday evening, as the light began to ebb, Willard found himself on the station platform with his father. The train, headed by a steam locomotive painted a sombre black and purple, groaned its way into the station. The two men, travelling first class, found a compartment empty but for one other traveller, a man absorbed in his leather-bound Bible.

Willard, who always found time alone with his father awkward, was relieved at the third man’s presence. The two Thorntons settled into seats opposite each other. The older man produced some business papers, and began to read. Willard, loathing the thought of touching any of his hated paperwork, reached his bag down arid did so anyway. The train lurched off into the twilight.

The silence in the compartment and the clattering darkness outside began to knit together in one clotted mass. The thoughts Willard had kept at bay all weekend began to swarm in on him: his debts; his lack of prospects; the hopelessness of his situation. He also thought about those other things: the man whose death had been so conveniently timed, the Irish rabbis, Willard’s strange but beautiful burglar. Without premeditating his action, he dropped his papers and said, ‘Father?’

Junius Thornton and the other traveller lowered their reading matter at the interruption. Then the Bible-reader rose, claimed his bag from the rack, and left the compartment. On the way out, he gave Willard a look which implied that if speaking on a Sunday weren’t illegal, then it certainly ought to be. Junius Thornton stacked and bookmarked his papers, but didn’t put them away, as though to suggest that any break in the silence were only provisional.

‘Yes?’

Willard didn’t know what he intended to say. If he could have undone his first impulsive exclamation, he would have. But since he had now to say something, he said the first thing that came into his head.

‘You know Powell fairly well, I think.’

‘Certainly.’

‘And you’d trust him, of course? I mean, you don’t believe he’d do anything that a gentlemen shouldn’t?’

Junius Thornton stared at his son. The older man’s thick features were hard to read at the best of times; still harder in the moving carriage and the uncertain light. ‘I believe Powell to be a reliable man, yes. Am I to know what makes you ask such a peculiar question?’

‘Oh nothing!’ Willard threw himself back in his seat, annoyed at himself for asking. ‘Just one or two odd things have happened lately. Things Powell might not have liked if he’d known about them.’

Junius Thornton continued to examine his son, waiting to see if any further explanation was forthcoming. It wasn’t. The old man shrugged slightly. ‘Powell likes money. He likes it very much. As far as I know, that’s the only thing he likes.’

Willard stared sulkily from the window. ‘Well, it’s a good job he runs a bank then.’

‘Yes,’ said his father, deliberately mishearing, ‘he does a good job.’

‘And do you think…?’

His father, impassive, waited for Willard to finish his sentence. Willard made no attempt to do so, and the older man let his glance stray back to the documents he’d abandoned. The glance prompted Willard to continue.

‘Well, I must say, I’m not at all sure he’s playing quite fair with me.’

‘Oh?’

‘I mean it was understood – quite plainly – I mean, that was the point of the whole arrangement – that I’d work off the loan. Not just pay interest for the rest of my life.’

‘I see. You were clear about the matter with him, of course?’

‘He said…’ Willard struggled to remember what Powell had said exactly. It had been vague and general, for sure, but the tone had been optimistic and reassuring. ‘He said there was money to be made on Wall Street. Plenty of it. He said those with the gift would always make money.’

‘Indeed. Those propositions seem true enough.’

Willard said nothing, just sat back, petulantly folding his arms and jerking his chin. His father stared for a moment, then tried a different tack.

‘And what was stipulated in the contract?’

‘Oh nothing – nothing that helps. But it’s not just about contracts. It’s about – I don’t know – I thought he was a gentleman, that’s all.’

The older man’s expression was never easy to read. Sometimes, Willard thought, it was because he didn’t have an expression. Just because somebody owns two eyes and a mouth doesn’t mean they register emotions in the normal human way. But that wasn’t the case now. There was something alive in the businessman’s face. There was a flicker of something in his mouth, some fleeting look in the shadows of his eyes. But the moment didn’t last. The older man didn’t let it. He clamped his lips and picked up the waiting stack of papers. But before he closed the discussion, he looked squarely at his son and said, ‘You ought to know that Powell is pleased with you. He tells me you’re doing good work. Well done.’

‘Gosh! Thank you, Father.’

Willard was astonished that Powell had noticed his presence in the bank, let alone found favour with it. But his astonishment was doubled by his father’s rare administration of praise. Hope leaped unreasonably up. Willard thought about the Firm; renewed the strength of his desire to live up to the family name, to claim the family crown. He felt elated and clasped the feeling in silence all the way to New York City.

His mood lasted until eight twenty-seven on Monday morning. When he arrived at work, he found everyone already there, except Charlie Hughes. The atmosphere was silent and heavy. Willard tried to lighten it. He stood by the hat stand.

‘What’s this revolting object?’ he said, picking up Claverty’s pale grey fedora. ‘Miss Hooper, kindly dispose of it.’ He threw Claverty’s hat across the room and hung his own in its place. Nobody smiled, nobody laughed. Annie Hooper picked up the fallen hat and came over.

‘Haven’t you heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘Charlie Hughes. He was arrested last night.’ Her voice trembled. ‘It seems he was found with sixteen cases of gin in his apartment. They’re charging him under the Volstead Act. Oh, Willard! He’s going to prison…’

Her tears burst forth. Willard put his arm around her and felt her nestle in like a little, lost bird. He wanted to press his lips to the top of her head, but didn’t. He held her as she cried. Charlie Hughes! A bootlegger! It was impossible.

When Willard looked up, he found Leo McVeigh staring at him: dark, brutal, intimidating, fierce.

29

You want to check a person out? Start from the air. From up there, you see the whole thing for what it is: for better or for worse.

And Abe saw. From two thousand feet and travelling at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, he saw. He saw Pen Hamilton’s home: a vast white house, maybe twenty bedrooms, maybe forty. Plus there were a number of cottages sprinkled around the grounds. And stable blocks. And servants’ quarters. And English-style lawns and rose gardens. And well-established stands of timber. And a lake, artificial but beautiful. And thousands of acres of plantation land. And, of course, an airfield, Pen’s own private paradise.

‘Jesus Christ!’

Abe didn’t actually speak the words, but he certainly mouthed them. Although it was early, Abe had intended to land the plane, clean up, then go up to the house, to say ‘hi’. But plans change.

A bunch of roses lay squashed in the racer’s cramped cockpit. The blooms were pale pink and had looked nice in the florist’s shop, only when he had been in the florist’s shop, he hadn’t seen the one acre rose garden or the glittering curves of glasshouses beyond.

His face moved in a hard-to-interpret expression. Regret? Uncertainty? Loneliness? Even fear? Abe let the plane fly itself, letting the perfectly tuned controls find their own balance, and looked at the roses. The colours were pretty, but an open-air cockpit is a tough place for roses. The blooms weren’t at their best and there was already a scatter of petals on the cockpit floor.

Abe’s face moved again: the same expression as before, only stronger. He took the flowers and held them out of the cockpit. As he did so, he slammed the throttle open and the control stick down. The hundred-and-fifty-mile-an-hour wind rose into a two-hundred-and-forty-mile-an-hour roar. The wind took one look at the roses, then tore their pretty pink heads off. The leaves snickered, then shredded. Abe levelled off. The roses were now just green sticks dotted with thorns.

He felt a stab of regret. Maybe if he had the last minute over again he wouldn’t have done it. But maybe he would. And minutes never come again. He glanced out of the cockpit and threw the sticks away.

Some people have money. Some people have none. The two sorts of people sometimes look like they live in the same place, but they don’t. They live in different countries, different planets.

30

The prison smelled bad, looked worse. The cells were big steel-barred affairs, with prisoners four to a cell. Bright lights hung from steel chains in the roof. The long hall rang with noise, obscenity and the smell of violence.

Willard watched as Charlie Hughes was picked from his cell and marched up to the visitors’ room. The room was cream with a dark-green band around the base. A single electric lamp hung from a wire in the ceiling. Hughes was brought in and sat down at the table. A smell of vomit entered with him. Willard waited for the guard to leave, then realised he wasn’t going to. He loathed having the guard there – it was like having a servant present while seducing a girl – but there was no choice.

‘Lord, Charlie, are you all right?’

‘Oh, Will-o, yes! Thanks for coming. Shouldn’t have, but, gosh, really, thanks!’

There was a pause. Hughes stank. Willard was wearing a new suit, hand-made in a lightweight charcoal-grey worsted, and he worried that Hughes’ smell would penetrate the cloth and infect it. He inched his chair back and, for a moment, was too overwhelmed with the awfulness of the place to know what to say.

‘I probably smell, do I? An Irishman chucked up on me last night. It’s kind of hard cleaning up in here. But, you know…’ He shrugged, as though being puked on by Irishmen was one of the inconveniences of city life.

‘God, Charlie! Isn’t it awful! You’ve got a lawyer, of course?’

‘Awful?’ Hughes sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Well, you know, I’m out of it now. I probably won’t get more than a year or so. And you know, I’ve got two sisters. It’s rather a relief really. It could have been worse.’

‘What have your sisters got to do with it? How could it have been worse?’

‘Well, you know…’ Hughes made a vague gesture, which Willard couldn’t interpret. But he suddenly remembered Arthur Martin, the car-crash victim whose death seemed to have been so conveniently timed.

‘Look, I’ve got the name of a chap if you need one,’ said Willard. ‘I don’t know him myself, but I know my father uses him.’

‘Pardon?’

‘An attorney. Someone to get you out of here. I can’t see them giving you a year, not for your first offence and everything.’

‘Oh, no! No, that’s quite all right. I don’t want to cause a fuss. I mean, it’s quite a let-off really.’

‘Charlie, can I ask you something?’

‘’Course, Will-o, anything.’

‘Were you really selling booze? They said you had sixteen cases in your apartment.’

Hughes laughed. ‘Sixteen cases! Gosh! Was it really that many? But, no, I mean, of course not. Can you see me bootlegging the old hoochino for a living? Not really my type of thing, that.’

Willard felt his familiar sense of distaste where Hughes was concerned. This stupid little man had allowed himself to be framed for something he couldn’t possibly be guilty of, then refused to make a fuss about it. Quite the opposite. If anything, Hughes appeared grateful.

‘Well, look, Charlie, I can’t stay long. If there’s anything I can do…’

‘Oh, I’m OK. I’ll be OK.’

‘Yes.’ Willard hardly bothered to conceal his dislike for anyone who could be OK in a place populated by puking Irishmen.

‘Thanks awfully for coming, Will-o. You will be careful, won’t you?’

‘What do you mean, careful?’

‘You know, the best thing would be to leave. I mean, they couldn’t do anything to you. It’s not as though you know too much, and your father being a pal of Ted Powell’s and all that.’

‘What the hell do you mean?’

Willard’s question was brutally frank and Hughes looked a little shocked. Willard could see he wanted to answer, but he kept shooting suspicious glances at the guard who was standing painfully close. Hughes bent forward and said in a low whisper, ‘Get out, Will-o.’

The guard stepped even closer and clattered the table with his night stick. ‘No whispering. Sit back. Hands on the table. And wind it up. You’ve got a minute.’

‘I can’t quit. I owe Powell two hundred thousand dollars.’

‘What!’

‘You heard. He financed a movie I made. We had problems with distributors.’

‘Jesus, Will-o! Jeez! You got a … you… Heck, I thought I

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