Too Mean to Die Read online

  Frankie moved to the side, did an about-face, and walked beside her. “Please,” he said, “don’t do this to me. I think you’re terrific. Let’s have a drink together when you get off duty.”

  “I don’t go out with sailors,” she said, holding her nose high in the air.

  “I ain’t a sailor.”

  She glanced at him. “No? Then what are you?”

  “I’m your slave, baby. Why don’t you meet me when you go off duty and I’ll do anything you say. I’ve got five hundred dollars in my pocket and we can really paint the town.”

  She stopped and looked up at him with her beautiful baby-blue eyes. “Where’d you get five hundred dollars?” she asked with a smile.

  “I won it in a card game.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’ll show it to you.”

  Frankie looked around and saw a door that led to a flight of stairs. He motioned with his head and walked toward it, and the blonde nurse followed him. He opened the door and she proceeded to the landing, turning around and looking back at him.

  He let the door close and took his roll out of his pocket. He unfolded it and flipped through the bills so she could see the tens and twenties. “Wanna hold it?” he asked.

  “I’ve always had a weakness for Italian guys with black wavy hair,” she replied.

  “What time you go off duty?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  “I’ll meet you at the main gate.”

  “Okay.” She turned to walk away, then stopped and looked at him again. “What’s your name?”

  “Frankie. Who’re you?”

  “Janie.”

  “See you later, Janie.”

  “Okay, Frankie.”

  Marie left first, and Frankie waited a few moments before he entered the corridor. He turned toward the exit and walked along swiftly, whistling a tune. Funny how it works, he thought. Some of them won’t talk to you even if you stand on your head, and others practically fall into your lap. And the best part of it is that you didn’t have to worry about getting the clap or the syph, because she was a nurse and nurses were clean.

  In another part of the hospital Longtree was strolling through Ward 12-D, looking at the charts at the ends of the beds. Like Frankie La Barbara, he was dressed in a stolen orderly’s uniform and trying to be inconspicuous. Doctors and nurses passed by, and on the other side of the ward an orderly was giving a shot to a patient.

  The men in this ward weren’t hurt so badly, and they were playing cards or checkers, reading magazines, and shooting the shit with each other. They didn’t pay any attention to Longtree, and finally he came to an empty bunk whose chart was headed by the name: CHERNOV, Robert K. Sgt.

  “Where’s Sergeant Chernov?” Longtree asked.

  “In the solarium,” replied the man in the next bed.

  “Thanks.”

  Longtree straightened up and walked to the ward solarium, at the end of the building. He left the ward, passed through a corridor lined with doors, and saw doctors and nurses in some of the rooms, examining patients. Some of the doors were closed; one of them led to the shithouse. He walked by the nurses’ station and saw the light at the end of the corridor, where the solarium was. Quickening his pace, glancing around to make sure no one was looking at him too intently, he walked into the solarium and saw a group of men in a corner, listening to a radio; a few groups of card players; some chess and checkers players; and men reading magazines. The solarium had open windows on three sides, making everything bright and airy.

  “Sergeant Chernov in here?” Longtree asked.

  A man with a bandaged eye and hand turned around. “Yo!” he said.

  “I’ve got to give you a test, Sergeant. Would you come with me, please?”

  Sergeant Chernov stood and limped toward Longtree. “What kind of test?”

  “Blood test.”

  “I already had a blood test today.”

  “You’re gonna get another one.”

  “I’m startin’ to feel like a goddamn pin cushion.”

  Longtree led the way down the corridor as Sergeant Chernov limped to stay up with him, wheezing and coughing, because Butsko had landed a haymaker on his throat during the big brawl. Longtree looked from side to side, trying to find someplace quiet. He saw an empty room with a scale and an examining table. “In here,” he said.

  Sergeant Chernov scuffled into the room behind him, and Longtree closed the door, latching it. Then he turned around and looked at Sergeant Chernov hobbling to the examining table.

  “Where do you want it?” Sergeant Chernov asked. “Out of my arm or out of my ass?”

  “Out of your guts,” Longtree said in a deadly voice.

  Sergeant Chernov blinked and turned around like an old man, although he was only twenty-nine. His eyes widened at the pearl handled jackknife in Longtree’s hand, and all his wounds suddenly throbbed with pain.

  “What’s going on?” he asked through a constricted throat.

  “Butsko’s a friend of mine,” Longtree told him, “and he’s got a lot of other friends who’ll do anything for him, and I mean anything. When you testify you’d better say that Sergeant Crane started the fight, not Butsko. Or else. Understand?”

  Sergeant Chernov looked at the knife. “Sergeant Crane’s got a lot of friends too.”

  “Fuck him and fuck his friends,” Longtree said. “You’re going to die if you don’t do as I say, and don’t forget, we know where to find you, but you don’t know where to find us. Got it?”

  Sergeant Chernov thought for a few moments. If this Indian could get to him in the hospital, so could somebody else. And besides, Sergeant Crane had thrown the first punch.

  “I got it,” he said.

  “Good,” Longtree replied, backing toward the door. “I’ll see you around.”

  “I hope not,” Chernov told him.

  “You know what you gotta do,” Longtree said, opening the door.

  Longtree slipped into the corridor and walked away swiftly, threading his way through nurses and orderlies, passing a man in a wheelchair with a bottle of yellow liquid hanging above his head.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon in the Curtis Hotel, and the madam, Vivian Brill, sat in her office, going over the books. She sipped a glass of wine and wore her eyeglasses low on her nose as she read the column of numbers and saw all the money the whorehouse was making. Even on such a slow week, business was still good, and at the end of the month it would almost be like having a license to print money. She examined the totals to see which girls were making the most money, and as usual Trixie, Nettie, and a girl named Flo were at the top of the list.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” Mrs. Brill asked.

  “Nettie.”

  “Come in, dear.”

  Vivian scratched her head as the door opened and Nettie entered, followed by another woman. Vivian had noticed lately that often she’d think things and then they’d happen. Just now she’d been thinking about Nettie and sudenly there she was. Maybe I’m getting to be psychic, Vivian thought. She looked at Dolly and figured she was a whore. I got the picture, Vivian thought. This babe is a friend of Nettie’s and Nettie wants me to give her a job.

  “Have a seat,” Vivian said, “What can I do for you?”

  Nettie smiled, and Vivian couldn’t help noticing how innocent she looked. “This is Dolly Butsko,” Nettie said. “Dolly, this is Vivian Brill.”

  “Hello,” said Vivian.

  “Hi,” replied Dolly.

  “Well,” Vivian said again, “what can I do for you?”

  “It’s about that Army corporal and Carl,” Nettie said. Carl was the bouncer who’d gotten killed.

  “What about them?” Vivian asked.

  “I’m gonna testify that the corporal pulled his knife in self-defense,” Nettie said, “ ‘cause that’s the way it happened, and I think all the other people here, including you, should do the same.”

  Vi
vian creased her brow. “What the hell are you talking about! We can’t let soldiers walk in here and kill people!”

  “But Carl pulled a knife first.”

  Vivian shook her head. “If that crazy son of a bitch soldier gets away with this, every other soldier in the Army will think he can come up here and pull a knife! We can’t have that!”

  “I don’t care,” Nettie said. “I’m gonna testify the truth.”

  “You’d better not,” Vivian said.

  “I told you what I’m gonna do, Mrs. Brill. You can fire me if you wanna, but that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  Vivian pointed at Nettie. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, young lady! This whole damn thing wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for you!”

  Nettie pinched her lips together like a little girl being scolded. Dolly looked at Nettie and tried to figure her out, because she was like an eight-year-old girl and a grown woman rolled into one.

  “I don’t care what you say, Mrs. Brill,” Nettie said. “I told you what I’m gonna do and I’ll do it.”

  Vivian Brill reached for her pack of cigarettes and lit them up, her hands trembling. On one hand she wanted to fire Nettie, but on the other, Nettie was one of her best workers. No servicemen ever complained about Nettie, and this was the first trouble Nettie had ever had in the year since she’d been at the Curtis Hotel. Then Vivian became aware of Dolly, sitting back on the sofa as if she owned the joint. Had Dolly put a bug in Nettie’s mind about this?

  Vivian looked at Dolly. “What’s all this to you?”

  Dolly looked Vivian in the eye. “That soldier who you call a crazy son of a bitch saved my husband’s life on Guadalcanal—that’s what it’s to me.” Dolly sat straighten “And let me tell you something: You wouldn’t be sitting where you are right now if it weren’t for men like my husband and soldiers like the one you call a crazy son of a bitch. Those soldiers are fighting for you and me and all Americans, and although they might be just a bunch of Johns to you, they’re American fighting men to me.” Dolly’s voice became stronger as her anger boiled more furious. “That bouncer of yours wasn’t a soldier. He was just a dirty little back-stabber, but that young corporal had spent nearly a year on Guadalcanal, and he wasn’t about to back down before some dirty little back-stabber. I don’t care whether a woman is a whore or a madam or whatever she does—all of us should stand behind our men in uniform, especially people like you who earn your living off them.”

  Vivian Brill was a tough old broad herself, and nobody intimidated her. “No soldier’s gonna come into my place and make trouble, and I don’t give a shit where he’s been or what he’s done.”

  “But Mrs. Brill,” Nettie said, “Carl pulled a knife first.”

  “And don’t forget,” Dolly added, “that Bannon is a combat soldier, and when he sees a knife he just goes into action. That’s what his training is for. He don’t know any different.”

  Vivian Brill scowled. “I’ve got to keep some standards here, otherwise servicemen will rip the place up.”

  Dolly leaned forward. “Let me tell you something, sweetheart. Bannon is a very popular man, and so is my husband. If you testify against Bannon, you’re gonna have about a hundred soldiers from their outfit running through here one of these nights, and when they’re finished there ain’t gonna be anything left, and you might not even be left either.”

  Vivian thought of soldiers tearing the Curtis Hotel to shreds, and a shiver passed through her, but still she wouldn’t give in. “I’ll just call the MPs and have ‘em all put away.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Dolly asked. “And how many servicemen do you think’ll come up here after you do that? These guys are like brothers to each other when the chips are down, and they’re not going to patronize a place that throws their buddies in jail and testifies against them in court, telling lies and stuff. This joint’ll become a haunted house before you know it but”—and now Dolly smiled—“if you tell the truth and testify that your bouncer pulled the knife first on Bannon, which is the way it happened, all the servicemen on Hawaii will find out about it within twenty-four hours, because news like that moves fast, and they’ll think you’re on their side and that the Curtis Hotel backs them up when they need to be backed up, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you get more business than ever up here.”

  “Hmmm,” said Vivian Brill. She looked down at her ledgers and saw all the money she was making. It would be a shame to place the business in jeopardy just because of a bouncer who had pulled a knife on a soldier. And if business improved, it would be wonderful. She puffed her cigarette and realized that the other things Dolly said were true too. American soldiers were fighting a war and they deserved a break every now and then. “Okay,” she said, “I'll do it. I just don’t want that Bannon, or anybody who knows him, in this establishment ever again. Is it a deal?”

  “It’s a deal,” Dolly said.

  Nettie jumped up, wrapped her arms around Vivian Brill’s wrinkled throat, and kissed the thick layer of makeup on her cheek. “Oh, thank you so much, Mrs. Brill!” she said.

  Vivian Brill was touched by the sudden show of emotion and was flustered. She pushed Nettie away and frowned. “You’d better go to your room and get ready for work.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Brill.”

  Nettie turned and ran out of the office, and Dolly arose from the sofa.

  “Thanks a lot,” Dolly said. “You won’t regret it.”

  “I hope not,” Vivian Brill said gruffly.

  Dolly walked out of the office, and Vivian looked down at her ledgers but couldn’t see the numbers because her eyes were misty. She remembered when she was young and had loved a man so much she would have done anything for him. He’d been killed in the First World War, and she’d gotten hard after that, but it was nice to see that other women could still care that way about men. Somebody had to, she supposed.

  She wiped her eyes and the numbers came into focus. It sure wasn’t easy to run a whorehouse. Crazy things happened all the time. But it was worth it, and Vivian Brill never let her emotions overrule her sound business sense.

  Soldiers came and soldiers went, but the Curtis Hotel would remain forever if she had anything to say about it.

  General Douglas MacArthur sat in his office on the eighth floor of the AMP Building in Brisbane, Australia. He was smoking a corncob pipe, and his battered old war-dog hat hung on a peg behind him. On the desk were the plans for Operation CARTWHEEL, comprising a systematic series of amphibious attacks throughout the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, culminating with an assault on the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul, on New Britain Island.

  It was a massive operation, extremely complex because it required the coordination of huge numbers of troops, both Army and Marine, plus their air support, sea transport and seaborne artillery support. There were problems of command, because Admiral Nimitz would direct half of the operation and MacArthur would direct the rest. The logistical requirements were almost beyond comprehension.

  General MacArthur looked at the maps and plans, his keen mind filing away facts and important information. His memory was legendary; he could read pages of information once and then recite them word for word, never making an error. His square jaw moved from side to side as he chewed the stem of his pipe and meditated on the coming battle.

  He knew that when all was said and done, the Army and Marine infantry would have to do the dirty work. They’d have to take ground, hold it, and take more ground. Everything would depend on the individual foot soldier, and the outcome of Operation CARTWHEEL would depend on those faceless ordinary men, most of whom had been civilians when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.

  General MacArthur knew that the fighting was going to be tough in the jungles of the Solomon Islands, and that the Japanese infantry soldiers were an elite, like the German infantry, whereas American infantrymen tended to be the dregs of the draftees after the Air Corps and Navy skimmed off the best for their technological specialities.

  But General MacArthur knew t
hat the American soldier was a fighting soldier when he had to be. He griped and goldbricked and went AWOL whenever he could, but when the chips were down the American soldier fought like a son of a bitch. He remembered how they’d battled on Bataan, when they’d been outnumbered and outgunned by the Japanese and weakened by short rations.

  General MacArthur gritted his teeth, because Bataan was a bitter memory to him. He had been defeated by the Japanese, and it rankled. He was a proud man, the son of a general who won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Civil War, and he himself had been one of the most decorated American soldiers of the First World War. Yet, the Japs had kicked him out of the Philippines, and all he wanted to do was return, just as he said he would.

  Often he recalled his last days on Corregidor, when he had radioed General Marshall in Washington and told him of his plan to break his American soldiers out of the Japanese ring of hell on Bataan. He’d feint toward his left flank with a powerful artillery barrage and then attack on the right with the remainder of his II Corps, taking the enemy’s Subic Bay positions in reverse, then follow with an assault by his I Corps. If successful, they’d capture enough supplies to carry on the fight, and they could escape into the Zambales Mountains, where they could carry on guerrilla warfare indefinitely. But General Marshall had turned him down, and his brave army was captured. Twenty-five thousand of his men became casualities and it all could have been avoided if Washington had listened.

  There was a knock on his door and he looked at his watch. It was 1000 hours; General Oglesby was right on time as usual. “Come in!”

  The door opened and General Oglesby marched into the office, carrying his briefcase. He came to a halt in front of General MacArthur’s desk and saluted smartly. General MacArthur returned the salute.

  “Have a seat, General.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  General Oglesby sat down and opened his briefcase, taking out a sheaf of papers. General MacArthur pushed the Operation CARTWHEEL plans to the side and found the stack of personnel information on colonels in his command who were eligible for the two brigadier stars that he could award.