THE HERO
Kenneth C. Crowe
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Kenneth C. Crowe
Cover illustration
“I want you for the U.S. Army”
by James Montgomery Flagg
(Lithograph 1917)
Prints & Photograph Division
Library of Congress
Books by Kenneth C. Crowe
AMERICA FOR SALE
COLLISION
THE JYNX
THE DREAM DANCER
THE HERO
This book is dedicated to
Rae Lord Crowe
CHAPTER ONE
He was halfway through the final chapter of ‘A Nurse Was Called’ when Mrs. Garmeis came through the door as she did every morning at exactly 10 o’clock; this time carrying a white box from Karp’s Bakery, bound with blue and white string in her left hand. He tried not to be annoyed.
From the moment he awoke this morning, he had felt inexplicably antsy as though something was about to happen in his life that he had no way of anticipating or worse controlling. He couldn’t believe that his need to finish ‘A Nurse Was Called’ could be the source of his unease. Now Mrs. Garmeis was fluttering into the store breaking his concentration just as he was about to find out who killed Nurse Madison’s patient. The pressing goal of finishing the book had interrupted his daily routine of blazing through the newspapers, The Daily Mirror, the New York Times and the Herald Tribune.
She flipped the red sign with its big white letter hanging on the glass of the front door from CLOSED to OPEN, turned and said over her shoulder: “Where’s your happy face?” She raised her arms high, turned her face upwards, and sang “Oh how we danced.”
“The Anniversary Song,” he called getting up to greet her with the smile she demanded every morning. Mrs. Garmeis was an irrepressible singer whose life was a musical starring Mollie Garmeis.
“Happy second anniversary, Ryan,” she said as she twirled past the front counter and up the four steps to the Garden Room in the rear of the store. She returned a few minutes later with a tray carrying two pieces of apple kuchen and two cups of coffee.
“Thank you Mrs. Garmeis.” The regulars and the mailman and the deliverymen called her Mollie, but to him she was Mrs. Garmeis and always would be. He ignored her many invitations to cross the line to address her as Mollie. This formality was instilled in his childhood when he came to Kips Bay Books at least once a week to visit his grandparents, always getting a lollypop from her, always saying: ‘Thank you, Mrs. Garmeis.’ His grandparents had sold the bookstore to him for the cost of inventory with only one proviso, that Mrs. Garmeis would be employed there for as long as she wanted the job.
She sat in the high-backed oak armchair, his grandfather’s favorite and now hers, angled for easy views of the front counter and Lexington Avenue outside, sipping coffee, eating the kuchen, baked that morning at Karp’s across Lexington Avenue from Kips Bay Books. “I ordered three dozen cupcakes for tonight.” Normally a dozen was adequate, but tonight they had been expecting a larger turnout.
‘Didn’t she ever listen to the weather report?’ he asked that place inside his head where we all ask questions like that. The WOR morning show had reported that heavy snow was on the way. He had heard it and he knew that she listened to WOR religiously as she and her husband, Irv, ate breakfast.
Mollie loved yellow cake cupcakes with chocolate fudge icing and chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream icing. His grandparents, Brendan and Laura Garrity, had served tea, coffee and cupcakes since they initiated the monthly Mystery Night in 1938. Mrs. Garmeis was a traditionalist, who didn’t like change so when Ryan announced that he was adding cheese and kielbasa on toothpicks with red and white wines to the menu, she told him he was making a mistake and called his grandmother to complain. His irritation over that lasted less than a day. She was too nice, too hard a worker, too much a part of his growing up to be resented for being Mollie Garmeis.
The bells over the front door tinkled. Mrs. Garmeis was out of her chair as though it were the sound of a starting gun. Her kuchen was half eaten, her coffee half drunk. She worked so enthusiastically at sales and customer service that casual shoppers assumed she owned the store. The customer was a tall man in a tweed overcoat, who had taken off his fedora to speak to her. She walked back to her chair, saying to Ryan. “One of yours.”
“I called yesterday about the Teddy Roosevelt book.” The man’s eyes were drawn to, and quickly averted from, the scar that ran as a crescent-shaped ridge of flesh from the lower edge of Ryan’s left eye to his jaw.
“Ah yes! Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Through the Brazilian Wilderness.’” Ryan went around the counter, He held up the heavily-bound book. “I’ve been meaning to read this for months and now it’s going to float out of my hands into your library.”
The customer smiled, looking down at ‘Through the Brazilian Wilderness’ laid before him on the counter. Ryan’s comment had added to the value of the book.
He rang up the sale.
Snow began falling at 3 o’clock around the time he resumed reading ‘A Nurse Was Called.’ The book worked right to the end giving Ryan the pleasure of knowing that he could recommend it to the mystery aficionados who would come tonight to the gathering in the Garden Room at the back of the store. His grandparents had installed four arm chairs and two couches for the regulars in the Garden Room whose French doors opened onto a small patio surrounded by flowering bushes in the tiny backyard. There was a core of eight, three married couples and two widows, who were there every month, thrilled to be meeting an author and ready to buy an autographed book. None ever seemed to have read the mystery of the month in advance. Along with the eight regulars another dozen or so drop-ins could be expected to show up, usually friends and relatives of the writer or passers by on Lexington Avenue who had seen the placard with the name of the book and picture of the author announcing the event in the front window of Kips Bay Books.
“Got to get home for the man of the house,” Mrs. Garmeis announced pulling on her long tan and black cloth coat at four o’clock. On the day Mrs. Garmeis was hired by his grandmother in 1933, she arranged to work from 10 until 4 so she could get back to Sunnyside in time to cook dinner for her husband and children, Sol and Mary, who were then college students.
“Have a good evening Mrs. Garmeis. See you tomorrow.” As soon as she was out the door, he went back to his easy chair where he picked up the New York Times, glancing at the front page. None of the stories interested him. He turned through the paper. On page 21, a two paragraph story with the headline, ‘Hero Dies Saving Young Woman From Tracks in Front of Subway Train,’ caught him. He read, ‘Jumping to the tracks of the IRT Bliss Street elevated subway station in Sunnyside right in front of an onrushing train, Robert Reilly, a shipping clerk for Oldman’s Grand Department Store, rescued Mrs. Eileen Donovan, 23 years old, of 47-57 46th Street, Woodside, Queens, who had fallen onto the tracks, police said. Reilly managed to throw Mrs. Donovan back onto the platform. He was crushed by the train as he attempted to vault to safety. According to the police report, Mrs. Donovan was hurrying to catch the train coming into the station when she tripped or stumbled onto the tracks. Mrs. Donovan was taken to St. John’s Hospital in Long Island City for treatment for shock and minor cuts and bruises.’
Bobby Reilly who was with him in Korea was from Queens. How many Bobby Reillys could there be in Queens?
He had awoken this morning thinking of Reilly, remembering once again his intention to invite him to lunch or dinner to thank him for saving his life. Ryan shuddered at the coincidence of recalling his unfulfilled obligation and then this Reilly’s death. The bell over the front door rang interrupting his uncomfortable feeling of shame.
Mr. Henry from the newsstand on the corner came in brushing snow from his heavy jacket. “Getting heavy out there.”
“Yeah.” Ryan had to suppress a surge of agitation, realizing he was more interested in getting back to the newspapers than waiting on Mr. Henry. He made an effort to sound pleasant: “How can I help you, Mr. Henry? Looking for something special?”
“Do you have a book called Horton something?
“Follow me. You want ‘Horton Hears a Who!’ A great book for kids.”
He led him to the children’s section where there were three copies on the shelf. As Mr. Henry perused ‘Horton Hears a Who’, Ryan blurted out, “Did you see that story about the guy saving the girl from a subway train in Queens?”
Mr. Henry continued turning the pages. “The News and Mirror had big stories on it,” he said distractedly, his eyes and mind on ‘Horton Hears a Who.’ Closing the book, Mr. Henry said, “I want to get a book for my little boy for his birthday.”
“How old is he?”
“He’s eight.”
“This is the perfect one. Free gift wrapping for you Mr. Henry.”
“Can’t beat that.”
He led him to the counter by the front door, wrapped the book in red, blue and green birthday paper, and rang up the sale. He went back to his chair to reread the story in the Times. The Herald Tribune didn’t cover it. The Mirror’s story was on page four with a three-line headline in a narrow column: ‘Hero Killed/Rescues Girl/On El Tracks.’
He had to know whether the dead hero was the same Bobby Reilly who rescued him from certain death in Korea.
The telephone information operator provided him with numbers for three Robert Reillys in Queens. Two answered the phone. Neither was the right Reilly. The third number rang on and on without an answer.
Ryan turned the window sign to closed and crossed Lexington Avenue in the falling snow to get his dinner from the White Blossom Restaurant. He ordered the Number Three Special, egg foo young, egg roll and fried rice with egg drop soup, a Chinese tea bag and a fortune cookie to go.
He put the kettle on to boil and ate his dinner at the small table in the Garden Room that looked through French doors onto the small backyard. Snow had collected three inches deep on the patio and clung to the branches of the London Planetree. He cracked open the Chinese fortune cookie as he drank the tea. The little strip of paper read: ‘Inner Peace Outer Joy.’ ‘That’s not a fortune,’ he thought, ‘that’s a philosophy of life. Maybe you’re supposed to reflect on the saying?’
After he brushed his teeth, he set up 10 folding chairs in the Garden Room just in case. Along with the two couches and easy chairs, enough seating for 18 people. The publisher had delivered 50 books. That was optimistic. Ryan figured that with the weather, he would be lucky to get his eight regulars and one or two drop-ins.
The front door bell tinkled interrupting the task of laying out the cheese alongside the two bottles of wine, red and white. Ryan hurried from the back through the narrow corridor formed by six-foot-high book shelves.
A woman dressed for the cold in a long green coat, the added insulation of a brown plaid scarf and a woolen red knit hat, stood just inside the front door. “Anybody home?” she called out.
“Coming mother.”
She laughed. “Hi. I’m Nicky Hancock. You must be Henry Aldrich,” she said extending her hand.
“And you must be the author of ‘A Nurse Was Called.’”
CHAPTER TWO
By 7:30, the Garden Room was packed. Several men had helped Ryan haul more folding chairs from the storage room in the basement. He counted 36 people in chairs and more standing around the fringe of the room. All were talking about the weather, the book, neighborhood gossip, creating a din.
“I couldn’t put this book down,” Ryan shouted holding up a copy of ‘A Nurse Was Called.’ The crowd quieted. In a softer voice: “I couldn’t put this book down. I hope after tonight’s program, all of you and certainly at the very least some of you will buy this marvelous book so the author, Nicole Hancock, can autograph it for you. A brief synopsis: The protagonist of ‘A Nurse Was Called’ is a hefty nurse, amateur detective, Irene Madison, whose boyfriend is a detective, Seamus Quinn, who says four or five times, ‘I’m no Shamus, I’m the real McCoy.’ I loved that line. Now I invite the author, Nicole Hancock, to come up and tell us all about her book.”
She grinned. “I’m just thrilled that so many of you turned out on a night that’s the equivalent of a blizzard in New York City. Where I come from, Syracuse, a six-inch snowfall would be considered a dusting.” That drew chuckles. “If I look like I have a glow on, I do.” She held up a glass of white wine. “This is party time for me. I’m on my second glass of wine. I’m normally a one glass gal, but I am enjoying a life-changing event today and I’m celebrating. This evening, just before I left my apartment, I got a call telling me that the deal had been closed to turn my first book, ‘Death of a Sweet Old Lady’ into a movie. I haven’t been this happy since my divorce was finalized.”
Most, but not all, clapped. A few laughed. Those uncomfortable with divorce didn’t want to condone Nicky’s light-hearted assessment of the end of her marriage with applause. “When’s the movie coming out,” a woman asked.
“I have no idea. I’m more interested in when’s the check arriving in the mail. The money from this movie deal opens the world for me. I’ll be able to fulfill my pent-up wants.”
“Better go easy on the sauce,” a uniformed cop from the local precinct called out to roars of laughter and affirmations.
Nicky grinned at the cop giving him a thumbs up. The money would mean a decent apartment, no more walking up four flights of stairs, taking a bath in the kitchen, and the gloom of a northern exposure with the sun blocked from the windows forever by the five-story building across East 88th Street. Better than moving, the money would finance her long-term dream of a baby. A baby when she found the right man. Intelligence was high on her list, and attractive, and self-assured, and physically fit, and at least five-foot-eight, which would be an inch taller than her. Those were the qualities she wanted to pass on to her boy or girl. And likeable. She almost forgot that. She would have to like the guy since she would be going to bed with him for the moment of creation. He wouldn’t need money. The father of her child-to-be might never know he was the father. She would think about that when the time came. The cop leaning against the French doors leading to the snow-covered patio behind the store wasn’t eligible. He was wearing a ring and she didn’t want a married man. She had had enough of cops and married men.
“In case any of you are wondering why I write mysteries, I want to confess that I just love my main character, Nurse Irene Madison. She looks and acts like 80 percent of the nurses I’ve worked with. Only when she isn’t taking care of patients she spends her time tracking down murderers with the help of Detective Seamus Quinn.
“But before getting into Nurse Madison, I always say to gatherings like this, in case any of you are from Syracuse, that’s my home town, but I’m not related to Congressman, Clarence E. Hancock My dad, Herman Hancock, ran a gas station on Erie Boulevard and always wondered if he were a distant cousin of Congressman Hancock. I did some research and found out we weren’t related. End of that story. I’m giving some thought to moving back to Syracuse some day, so I can relive my Syracuse childhood eating a hot dog with the works and an ice-cold root beer.”
She told the audience that her life had ranged from interesting to exciting from the day she graduated from Cornell’s Nursing School at New York Hospital through her years in the Visiting Nurse and in Army field hospitals during the war in Europe, until she got married. “That lasted two weeks. The fun-filled honeymoon, not the marriage. The marriage went on for four blistering years. I had a husband who didn’t want me to work as a nurse. His line was as long as I’m supporting you, you’ll do what I tell you, and like so many women, I dumbly did what my husband told me. While sitting home in boredom one morning, I read in the paper that one of my patients from my days as a Visiting Nurse had been murdered. I looked into the case with help from a real life detective from the 23rd Precinct on the Upper East Side, I wrote ‘Death of a Sweet Old Lady.’ The critics describe my books as police procedure thrillers and I would agree. Now listen closely as I read the first chapter of my latest book, ‘A Nurse Was Called.’ Instead of Nurse Madison calling Seamus to start the investigation rolling as she did in the first book, the detective calls her. Let me say parenthetically that Detective Seamus was looking for an excuse to call Nurse Madison, because my first book ended with him in love with her and wishing he could find a reason to contact her again.”
One of the regulars, a widow, called out from her comfortable easy chair, “Now it is clear that Seamus is a family man, but aren’t you tempting him into adultery working so closely with a woman he admires and is obviously attracted to?”
“Adultery has been known to happen in life and in fiction. So has unrequited love. Let me read the first chapter and then you can buy the book to find out whether or not Seamus has any reason to go to confession on Saturday.”
Ryan studied her as she read. She was tall and slender just beyond being too skinny with nicely rounded hips. Her curly brown hair was cut short; her lips when they weren’t stretched into a grin or wide in laughter could only be described as juicy.
Nicky lingered after the last of the audience had departed from the dark warmth of the bookstore onto the snow-covered street. She was soaring. Too much to drink. Overly excited with the movie deal. Happy with her performance tonight instead of her usual reaction of discomfort saying to herself why-did-I-say-that? Besides, she was happy where she was, not ready to go home to her lonely apartment. With another glass of wine in hand, she went to the French doors to look out at the falling snow. He flicked on the garden lights. “Wonder, wonder, wonderful,” she said turning to smile at him. “I wish I had French doors and a garden like this. I’d eat breakfast here every morning.”
He swallowed the temptation to say, ‘Stay the night and we’ll have breakfast here in the morning.’ He wasn’t presumptuous enough to say that.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Her question made him uncomfortable. Had his thought played across his face? Was she confronting him or being playful?
“The strong, silent type eh?” His crew cut, his gentleness and lean body viewed from his right side gave him a boyish air. From another point of view, the scar on the other side of his face offered a touch of menace. She found the combination inviting. Could he be a killer or a cop in her next novel? She took the little leather pad with the holstered pencil she always carried for moments like this from her pocketbook. She made a note of her observations.
He wondered what she was writing, but didn’t ask.
She saw the question on his face. “I’m the strong, but not silent type. I’m making notes. I put the pieces of life I see around me into my stories. I’d love to have another glass of wine, but I can’t take the chance. Two glasses and I’m ready to fly.” She smiled. “Three and I can be a very dangerous woman. So it’s frightening to wonder what four would do.”
“Then by all means have four,” he said.
“You’ve got that look on your face again. But I’m not going to ask you what you’re thinking, because we’ve established that your thoughts are your own and I think I know what you’re thinking.”
Both laughed. The day that had begun so miserably had ended happily. Nicole Hancock had turned out be a lusty, engaging woman who made him feel good just to have been near her.
All the way in the taxi to 88th Street, in the climb up the four flights of stairs to her apartment, and lying in bed for the longest time before sleep overtook her, Nicky thought about him. What was his story? Where did he get that scar? He had that Eastern college accent; where did he go to college? He was poised and attractive. The scar gave him character, a mysterious look. She was curious about why he had taken up a bookstore as a career. She wished she had asked him that question; she almost did. She didn’t want to sound condescending as if she considered running a bookstore a demeaning career. She had to learn more about him, whether he had any hereditary diseases or mental problems. Obviously she was attracted to him. He looked like a likely candidate to be the father her child.
Ryan lay in bed waiting the longest time for sleep as he did every night, but with her face clearly in his mind he enjoyed his wakefulness tonight, thinking about her.
CHAPTER THREE
Two dreams filled his night. A persistent nightmare of a bayonet, a knife, or a spike being thrust toward his right eye. On this night he grabbed the bayonet, cutting his hands but holding the weapon just short of plunging into his good eye to blind him. He awoke screaming, sobbing, shaking. He looked at the alarm clock on the night table. Three AM. The nightmare wasn’t unexpected, but that didn’t make it any easier. Any remembrance of the fear-filled moments of combat in the Hürtgen Forest or Korea sparked the nightmare. As usual, he lay panting, his heart pounding. After lying awake for seemingly hours, sleep overcame him again taking him to the edge of a deep, dark pool of water in the rock quarry where he swam as a boy on summer vacations in the Catskills. HHHe stood under the light of a full moon on the cliff above the quarry wanting to dive in, but hesitating in the fear of hitting a rock. His attention was drawn suddenly to a woman emerging from the water on the far side of the quarry; first her head of short dark hair, which she shook and then ran her fingers through. Her bare shoulders, her naked back, smoothly taut around her waist adding a succulent emphasis to her haunches, rose slowly out of the darkness. He realized he was watching the mystery writer, Nicky Hancock. Ryan awoke to lie in the warmth of his bed feeling a combination of joy at so appealing a dream and disappointment that she hadn’t turned around.
In the morning, Ryan flashed through the New York Times, the Daily News and the Mirror. No stories on Bobby Reilly. He looked at the clock. Nine AM. Mrs. Garmeis probably hadn’t left her house yet. He dialed her number. “Good morning, this is Ryan.”
“Is there something wrong?”
“No. No. I’m glad I caught you at home. You get the Star Journal don’t you? I assume they had a story the man being killed while saving the girl from the train at the Bliss Street station.”
She said there had been a big front page story about it in yesterday’s edition, which she still had. She agreed to bring the paper with her to work.
As soon as Mrs. Garmeis arrived, Ryan took his coffee and the Star Journal into the Garden Room. The story about Bobby was under a banner headline:
Korean War Veteran Dies Saving
Young Mother from Subway Train
‘A Woodside man yesterday sacrificed his life to save a young mother from certain death at the Bliss Street Station in Sunnyside.
‘Robert Reilly, 23, of 48-11 47th Street, Woodside, who fought in the Korean War, heroically and without hesitation leapt onto the tracks right in front of the oncoming subway train, witnesses told police. They said Reilly exhibited amazing strength and speed as he literally tossed Mrs. Barry Donovan, 23, of 47-57 46th Street, Woodside, from the well of the tracks back onto the station platform, then almost escaped to safety himself.
‘Police Sgt. William Bolger said that the first car of the train struck Reilly as he attempted to vault onto the platform. “It’s hard to believe that Mr. Reilly was able to do what he did in the few seconds available, but the witnesses I interviewed said he did,” Sgt. Bolger said.
‘Mrs. Donovan, who once lived on the same block as Mr. Reilly and was in his class at P.S. 125, said that she had run up the stairs when she heard the train approaching, her high heel caught on the top step and she stumbled across the platform onto the tracks. “The train was right on top of me. I don’t know how he got me out of there so fast. I was on my knees. He grabbed me under the arms and swung me back onto the platform.”
‘She said, “We were in the same class in P.S. 125. I used to walk home from school with Bobby. I knew him all my life. I’m so grateful to him. I’ll never forget him.
‘Mrs. Donovan, whose husband, Barry, is a police officer, has a four-year-old daughter.
‘Mr. Reilly’s widow, Teresa Reilly, said her husband was on his way to work as a shipping clerk in Oldman’s Grand Department Store on Fifth Avenue. She said she married him because he was her hero. “The way I met Bobby was he pulled me out of the water at Rockaway. He saved my life. He was a wonderful husband, and father. He was very brave man. You know he fought in Korea, even though he didn’t like to talk about it I know he saved some other soldiers. And now the whole world knows how brave he was. How many men would have jumped in front a subway train to save someone?”
‘Mr. Reilly was born on Dec. 24, 1931 in St. John’s Hospital in Long Island City. A graduate of Bryant High School, he joined the U.S. Army in 1950 and saw combat in Korea. He is survived by his wife, Eileen Reilly, his 18-month-old son, Steven, and his mother, Mrs. Mary Reilly of Woodside.
‘Visiting hours at the Loughran Funeral Home, 44-40 48th Ave., Woodside are from 2 PM to 4 PM and from 7 PM to 9 PM today, tomorrow and Friday. The funeral Mass will be at 10 AM Saturday in St. Mildred of Minster’s Roman Catholic Church. Burial will be in Calvary Cemetery.’
Ryan closed his eyes, remembering Pvt. Bobby Reilly. He didn’t like Reilly from the outset. The private was fidgety, walked with a slouch. His bushy, black eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose not a fraction of skin showing between them. They never had a real conversation. Reilly didn’t like officers, that was obvious. Ryan had been an enlisted man too, so he understood. But they didn’t come together in Jaguar One as friends. Ryan’s job was to oversee Bull Heydecker, a fierce 30-year man who loved the Army as much as he did, whipping Jaguar One’s motley crew of 12 soldiers, all branded as cowards, into a fighting unit. Bull made them roar ‘aaaarrgghh’ in the daily bayonet drill, when they did pull ups, when they fell in for morning roll call, and for myriad other activities and moments throughout the day.
Last August on one of those extraordinarily hot New York summer days when the blacktop is soft enough to write your initials in, Ryan was in the midst of shelving historical novels from a publisher’s box when he was startled by the roar of ‘aaaarrgghh.’ He knew before he turned that it must be Bull, because he was the only man on earth capable of a bellow so loud that it seemed to shake the floor of Kips Bay Books. Mrs. Garmeis shouted, “You can’t do that in here, sir” as a grinning Ryan and laughing Bull rushed towards one another. They shook hands and Bull slapped Ryan on the arm with his free hand. “Good God damn almighty, I couldn’t come through New York without stopping to see you Captain.” Ryan and Bull had exchanged Christmas cards since they had first met in Japan four years ago when Jaguar One was created.
He introduced the petite bleach-blonde standing behind him as his wife Dixie. She was no more than five feet tall and skinny, made to look all the skinnier by Bull’s height and girth. Even in mufti, Bull looked like the soldier he was. He told Ryan that they were grabbing the chance for a holiday in the city on their way from Germany to Bull’s new assignment as the first sergeant of an infantry company at Fort Benning.
Ryan took them around the corner to McGuire’s on 27th Street, where they sat at the bar each drinking two gin and tonics while struggling through a stilted conversation about the book store, the Yankees, and the throngs on the streets of New York.
The Heydeckers turned down his perfunctory invitation to dinner with the excuse of a Broadway show that night and a full dance card for the remainder of their few days in the city.
“Got some old soldiers I want to see. And Dixie wants to see the famous whale up at the Natural History Museum and go out to the Statue of Liberty before we head on down to Georgia. So we got to spread ourselves pretty thin to see everything and everyone.”
---
Ryan decided he had to go to the funeral home tonight to pay his respects to Bobby’s widow and mother. With that settled, throughout the day when he wasn’t waiting on a customer or talking to Mrs. Garmeis, he thought of Nicky, of her high cheekbones and fulsome face, her easy laugh.
Mrs. Garmeis left at 4; he turned the sign in the window from open to closed at 6, switched off the lights, and went upstairs to his apartment to change into a dark suit and black tie. He walked three blocks through cold and empty streets, everyone inside eating supper or watching TV, to his car, a second-hand, blue Mercury coupe, parked in front of his parents’ house on East 28th Street near Second Avenue.
CHAPTER FOUR
He parked in front of a bar on 48th Avenue directly across the street from Loughran & Sons Funeral Home. Next door to the funeral parlor was another bar, Dougherty’s Irish House. Ryan stepped onto a mound of rock-hard, dirty snow looking both ways before crossing 48th Avenue; he could see the colorful neons lights of four more bars along the avenue. He went into the crowded foyer of Loughran’s behind a man and woman, who had just made the transfer from the comfort of the bar to the wake as he approached.
Bobby Reilly was the only customer tonight, but the funeral parlor was packed with a mix of young and old men and women, most of them smoking, in tight groupings of three to six talking and laughing. Ryan threaded through the happy mourners to the open double doors beside which was a pedestal table holding a visitors’ register. Every chair in the viewing room was taken and more people lined the walkways on either side. The front of the room was filled with bannered floral displays: ‘Daddy,’ ‘True Hero,’ ‘Our Buddy,’ ‘Husband & Son,’ ‘Eternal Life.’ Dozens of elaborate Mass Cards were attached to three golden poles rising from the midst of baskets of flowers.
Ryan joined a queue of four couples waiting to briefly kneel beside the open casket to say their silent goodbyes or quick Hail Marys for the recently departed. He followed the pattern of those who went before him, a familiar Irish Catholic ritual. He knelt, perhaps too long, to look at the pale-faced corpse, eyes shut, dark hair combed neatly into a pompadour, hands folded across a crucifix. No sign that this body had been crushed by a subway train. No sign that this shell had contained the soul of a hero, who saved a young mother from an awful death, who saved his future wife from a rip tide at Rockaway Beach, who saved Ryan from a Chinese bayonet in Korea. The first thrust of the bayonet had pierced his heavy field jacket slicing his right side as he lay on the ground blinded in one eye, unable to move. The Chinese soldier had placed his foot on his chest to withdraw the bayonet, then ‘aaaarrgghh.’ Reilly flew across Ryan’s prostrate body an entrenching tool stretching before him like a bee’s stinger. The oval-shaped metal blade penetrated the enemy soldier’s throat almost taking off his head.
Reilly picked Ryan up and slung him across his shoulder. He tried to say thanks, but couldn’t speak. Ryan awoke in pain lying on a cot in a field hospital. Bull, another casualty of the battle, told him that Reilly saved him too, along with two other Jaguars. No one else had survived.
Ryan rose from the kneeler feeling a flush of embarrassment in realizing that the line behind had lengthened considerably. He took the few steps towards the woman in a black dress, a handkerchief in her hand sitting in the first row of seats between two thick-bodied older women, also in black.
“Mrs. Reilly?” he asked extending his hand. She nodded. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Usually that was the line he delivered to the surviving family members at wakes, but this occasion demanded more. “I knew your husband in the Army. My name’s Ryan Garrity, I don’t know if Bobby ever told you, but he saved my life in Korea.”
“He told me. Happy Garrity, right? The captain?”
He never knew his men called him Happy. He nodded and continued, “I’ve been meaning for a couple of years now to look up Bobby to thank him for what he did for me. I got evacuated right out of Korea back to Japan and then back to the states. I feel bad that I didn’t get a chance to thank him.”
“Now you’re here,” she said, her words sounding like a reprimand. “Sgt. Heydecker came by the apartment last summer. He took us all out to dinner, to the Asia on Queens Boulevard. Bobby saved his life too and he put Bobby in for a Congressional Medal of Honor. Did you know that?”
He shook his head, no. Her hostility made him uneasy. He wanted to get away from her as soon as possible. “He was a real hero,” he said in an effort to mollify her.
“You don’t have to tell me. That’s exactly why I married him. He was my hero. He was Sgt. Heydecker’s hero; he was your hero; one time he saved a colored man from being beaten up by that gang of thugs that hangs out in the candy store across from PS 125. Not many people know about that one. And then he gave his life saving Eileen Donovan. If it wasn’t for Bobby, Eileen’s little Peggy would have to grow up without a mother. So he did a lot of good, my Bobby, except his little boy, Steve, doesn’t have a father any more.” She pressed her face into her handkerchief.
Ryan ached with embarrassment, but he didn’t want to compound his failure by leaving without expressing a few words of sorrow to Reilly’s mother. “Is one of you, Mrs. Reilly, Bobby’s mother?” he asked two women in mourning black dresses.
“Oh God,” Teresa howled. She stood turning from Ryan to look around the room. “Kevin!” her harsh shout silencing the din of conversation in the room.
A big broad man with sandy hair pushed away from a wall. He strode down the aisle. “Yes,” he said looking at Ryan with a hard stare.
“This man wants to see Bobby’s mother. Do me a favor and find her for him.”
“Once again, I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Reilly.”
She waved him away. A dismissal that seared his stomach, that sent burning blood rushing to his face.
“Come on,” Kevin said. He led Ryan through the packed foyer to the front door. He said over his shoulder, “I think Mrs. Reilly is next door.”
Rosemary Clooney was singing “Hey There” when they walked into Dougherty’s whose bar was stacked with Bobby Reilly’s friends, neighbors and relatives, filling every stool leaving many standing with drinks in their hands. Kevin paused just within the doorway to study the faces. “There she is.” They went a cluster of four middle-age men, all in suits, standing and three women in black dresses sitting on bar stools.
“Mrs. Reilly…”
“Oh, Kevin,” the women in the center seat said, leaning over to kiss Kevin on the cheek. “What will we do without Bobby boy?” Her front teeth were crooked with pyorrhea; her face showed the premature wrinkles of hard living and drone work.
“Mrs. Reilly this is, ah. I didn’t get your name.”
“Ryan Garrity.”
She took his hands. “The captain. Bobby boy told me about you. He had nightmares about that Chink he killed for you, to save you.”
“I’ll always be grateful to him.”
“You should be. Bobby boy said he got his nightmares saving an officer he didn’t like.” She threw her hands in the air, cackling and adding to the laughter of the group: “But he didn’t like any of the officers. He didn’t like the Army.” She raised her glass, a signal to the bartender. “Jimmy,” she called. “Get us a drink for the captain and Kevin and another round here.”
Ryan took out his wallet. “Let me get this round,” he said.
“No, no. You get the next one,” she said.
He ordered a beer. Kevin along with the four men got boiler makers. The women had highballs. All raised their glasses in a toast. “Lord have mercy on his soul,” Mrs. Reilly said, and the others responded the same. Ryan waited for the next onslaught. He would have to endure whatever Mrs. Reilly had to say until he paid for the next round and he could leave.
Mrs. Reilly introduced each of the men and women, all friends from the neighborhood. “I was telling them about Bobby boy supposed to get the Congressional Medal of Honor for saving you and all those other boys and I guess for killing that Chink. He really didn’t like that. He was a sweet boy, but the Army had to make him into a killer.”
Ryan realized in listening to this inebriated, homely woman, old in her mid-forties or early 50s that it had never occurred to him to put Pvt. Reilly in for a medal.”
She continued: “And the nerve of that Pollack doctor telling us we had to let them do an autopsy on Bobby Boy or the Army would keep the body until we signed no matter how long we waited.”
“Dr. J?” he asked.
“Yeah. Dr. Jaro something or other. Why did they have to do an autopsy? To find out what makes a hero?”
Dr. J, that’s what he called him, because he couldn’t easily pronounce the doctor’s tongue twisting East European name. He was still in the shock of losing his eye and just having had an operation to pull a piece of shrapnel out of his head near his brain when Dr. J appeared at his bedside to question him about Pvt. Reilly performance that day.
Ryan said to Mrs. Reilly, “Dr. Jarocewicz.”
“That’s the one,” she said.
“Your Bobby was a brave man alright. You should be so proud of him Mary,” the woman sitting on Mrs. Reilly’s left side said.
“Someone told me a pension goes with the medal. Is that right?” Mrs. Reilly asked Ryan, but before he could respond she said, “I suppose that one will get it,” she said with a nod of her head towards the funeral parlor next door.”
“What has the Army told you about Bobby getting the medal? Ryan asked.
“Nothing. Bull Heydecker said that Bobby boy was like a hero out of a comic book, running all over the battlefield, carrying the wounded back, killing Chinks. And the thanks Bobby boy gets for it? When Bull Heydecker put him in for the medal the powers that be said no way. Then they cut up his body after he’s dead. Don’t they understand the body is the Temple of Christ?”
“He should get a medal from somebody for what he did for Eileen Kane too,” Kevin said.
“Eileen Donovan! Kane’s her maiden name,” Mrs. Reilly said. She polished off her high ball in a gulp.
Ryan signaled the bartender for another round. He was puzzled by the insistence of Dr. J to do an autopsy and the threat to hold Bobby Reilly’s body hostage until the family agreed. What the hell was going on?
CHAPTER FIVE
Ryan came out of his darkened bookstore into the cold, silence of a lonely-feeling, early Sunday morning Lexington Avenue. Digging his hands deep into the pockets of his green Army field jacket, shorn of its name tag and patches, he walked with head down against a chilling wind to Henry’s Candy Store on the corner. Copies of the Sunday New York Times and the Sunday Herald Tribune were piled high on the wooden newsstand outside the tiny store under a red and green Breyer’s Ice Cream sign. He dropped the coins for the two newspapers into a worn cigar box and turned to cross the avenue, waiting for a single car flying towards him to pass by.
Several customers were pointing to the pastries they wanted in the glass showcase facing Karp’s Bakery’s front door. An elderly couple was sitting at the table furthest from the door, the most desirable location on a frigid morning. He sat down one place away from them enjoying the warm scent of the bakery.
Millie, the waitress, red-haired, spider-waisted, wrinkled face, came with her order pad not bothering to give Ryan a menu. She said, “Good morning. Today we’re going to have a large orange juice, black coffee, two eggs over light, home fries, sausage and two hot rolls. Right?”
“Some day, I’m going to order something different and you’ll be shocked.”
“Some day my prince will come,” she said smirking.
Ryan restrained himself from saying, ‘I didn’t know you were married to a prince.’
She wrote his familiar order on her green and white pad. “I’ll be right back with the coffee.”
While waiting for Millie to return with his coffee, Ryan glanced at the headlines on the front page of the New York Times: G.O.P. '56 Strategy Assumes Nominee to be Eisenhower; British Want Iraq to Join with West in a Mideast Pact; Soviet Frees 2 Americans Long Held in Labor Camps; and Third Peiping Talk on U.S. Prisoners Lasts Five Hours. He read the story about UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold meeting with Red China’s Premier Chou En-lai over the fate of 11 U.S. Airmen being held as spies. “The bastards,” he said aloud, immediately feeling embarrassed, hoping the elderly couple didn’t hear him.
After eating his breakfast and leaving his usual tip on the table for Millie, Ryan went to the showcase counter to buy a loaf of rye bread sliced and a crumb cake to eat while drinking more coffee and reading the newspapers in the Garden Room at the back of his bookstore.
“How do you eat so much and stay so thin?” Mrs. Karp, a double-chinned, bulging vision of jolly-looking overeating, asked as she took his money for the breakfast and baked goods.
“Just lucky Mrs. Karp,” he said. Every morning, he ran up the stairs linking the store to his apartment six times; and weather permitting, he ran around the perimeter of Gramercy Park six times to the stares and amusement of watching pedestrians. The Army had addicted him to running. One bent, old lady, who walked her Yorkshire Terrier along the same route, often called out to him: “You’re going to hurt yourself doing that young man.” He lifted weights and worked out on a speed punching bag in his cellar on alternating days.
Sipping coffee and savoring the intense sweetness of the crumb cake, which he had slathered with butter, Ryan sat reading the Sunday Herald Tribune in the upholstered chair closest to the French doors in the Garden Room. On page 26, he read a short item that told him that Montgomery Gibson, president of Oldman’s Grand Department Store, planned to give Bobby Reilly’s widow a check for $1,000 at a luncheon on Friday in recognition of his heroic act in sacrificing his life to save a young woman from being crushed to death under the steel wheels of a subway car. He went through the New York Times without finding a story on Bobby Reilly and Oldman’s.
The front page of the Times Book Review drew a smile. Scotty Reston, the paper’s Washington Bureau chief, had written a review of ‘Civilization and Foreign Policy’ by Louis J. Halle. Originally, he had planned to order ten copies of the book, but the publisher’s rep had talked him into taking 20, pressing the notion that this was an important book and a good number of United Nations employees lived in the neighborhood surrounding Kips Bay Books. Being reviewed on the front page increased the odds of selling the 20 copies. He would stack the book beside the cash register. That often spurred sales.
Perusing the Book Review, the headline The Reason for a Hero caught him. Because of Bobby Reilly, he read the review in which the author, Marshall W. Fishwick, was quoted as writing: “We simply must have heroes. They give us blessed relief from our daily lives, which are frequently one petty thing after another.” Bobby Reilly was his own personal hero because he had saved his life under dire conditions. Jaguar One under his leadership had plunged into a slaughterhouse on an open hillside churned by artillery and crisscrossed by machine gun fire. And Pvt. Reilly, the malingerer, lowest on his list of those most likely to stand up in combat, had gone up and down that hill with the dead weight of a wounded soldier on his back at least twice, maybe more if Reilly’s mother were to believed, a feat in the realm of the miraculous. While Audie Murphy got his Medal of Honor for being a one-man Army, Ryan knew that Medals of Honor often went to men who saved other soldiers’ lives at the cost of their own. Jumping on a hand grenade seemed to be the most common event. No one in their right mind would have risked crossing that battlefield under the conditions that Reilly did. Luck was always a factor in surviving a battle, in escaping devastating wounds.
As his commanding officer, he should have put Reilly in for the medal. He was so devastated by the loss of his eye and the scarring of his face that the significance of Reilly’s feat that bloody day didn’t register for a long time. His mind was on the damage done to him. As soon as he could bring himself to do it, he began looking in the bathroom mirror almost every morning, first at the smooth-skinned half of his face and then turning to examine the rough scar and the false eye. The glass eye looked pretty good actually. Army doctors had a lot of experience replacing eyes. Almost immediately, he began having the nightmares of his good eye being destroyed leaving him in darkness, forever. He dreaded blindness. He often prayed, “Please God don’t let me lose my other eye.”
A little further in the review of Fishwick’s ‘American Heroes/Myth and Reality,’ another sentence leapt out at him: “Behind every hero is a group of skilled and faithful manipulators.” That was so true. In almost every battle, infantrymen died performing deeds that deserved medals and maybe songs of remembrance. What they were lacking was a chorus of cheerleaders to chant their praises. Bobby had an advocate in Bull, but he also had someone in the military bureaucracy who blocked his medal. Why the hell would anyone do that? Ryan wondered.
Turning another 11 pages, Ryan came to the ‘Criminals at Large’ column. Among the four mysteries and police procedures reviewed was Nicky Hancock’s ‘A Nurse Was Called.’ “If you were thrilled by Nurse Irene Madison’s performance as a woman in white smarter than any gumshoe in Nicole Hancock’s ‘Death of a Sweet Old Lady’, you’ll be in ecstasy in reading her latest (and best) ‘A Nurse Was Called.’ I hope I’m not going too far in saying I loved this book.” Ryan had eight copies still on the author’s signing desk in the Garden Room. Before he reopened tomorrow, he would do a placard with the quote: ‘I loved this book’ and insert it in the bookstore’s front window. First thing in the morning he would get on the phone to order another 20 copies from the publisher. He hoped he was making a decision based on business rather than his desire for the author.
He thought about Nicky, her easy laughter, her startling frankness about her marriage. He wanted to see her again, but couldn’t imagine so worldly and successful a woman being interested in him. She was probably dating other writers or business executives. He ran his finger along the scar on the left side of his face, feeling unattractive in the process. He stared at the review in the Times for several minutes and then decided to plunge in. He would say that the great review prompted him to call, to congratulate her.
He got the Manhattan telephone book to look for her number. No listing. He called information. Her phone was unlisted. He couldn’t blame her. She probably wanted to avoid calls from guys like him, who read her book or heard her talk and lusted after her. Maybe he could call her publisher’s office. Playing out the inquiry in his mind, he decided, no, that would be too embarrassing.
The phone rang. He picked up the receiver anticipating it would be his mother inviting him for Sunday dinner at 4 as she did almost every week.
“Hi. This is Nicky Hancock. Remember me?”
“How could I forget you Miss Hancock?”
“I just finished breakfast and I was having a second cup of coffee and started reading, ‘A Spray of Jasmine.’
“The new mystery set in Malibu.”
“You know your books Mr. Garrity. I was hoping you would call me, but Thursday, Friday and Saturday went by, and no call. So I said to myself the woman who passively waits, sometimes waits forever. I have two tickets to this afternoon’s matinee of ‘Fanny’ and no one to go with. Maybe I should use that as an excuse to ask that nice fellow from the bookstore to be my date. Well?”
“Great.” What a dumb response, he thought. He had seen a banner pasted across the men’s room mirror in McGuire’s: ‘Have you seen Fanny?’ He had read about the nude statue of Nejla Ates, the belly dancer in the show, that had been planted in the Poet’s Corner of Central Park.
“It’s playing at the Majestic. So why don’t we meet in front of the theater at say 2:30.”
“Great. We’ll find a place to have dinner afterwards.”
“Wonderful. And, since we’re dating, you can call me Nicky and I’ll call you Ryan.”
There had been little conversation in the frigid air outside the Majestic Theater after seeing ‘Fanny’ or in the taxi from West 44th Street to La Flor Española on Charles Street in Greenwich Village. Nicky insisted on paying for the taxi ride and told him that no matter how much he planned on resisting that dinner would be her treat too.
As he walked behind her down the steps into the small restaurant, Ryan’s delight at being asked out by an attractive woman, one of the most accomplished he had ever encountered, was replaced by the perplexing question of why, prompted by her stated insistence on paying for the play, the taxi, the dinner. He hoped she was motivated by attraction rather than for some commercial reason.
The maitre d’ bowed as they entered. “So nice to see you again, Miss Hancock” he said to Nicky, his eyes playing for a moment too long on Ryan. He led them to a small table for two at rear of the restaurant. “May I get you something from the bar?”
“A bottle of Rioja. White. Could you get us an order of Chorizos and a plate of those wonderful Spanish potatoes while we’re looking at the menu.”
He bowed to her and went through the swinging door into the kitchen, came out a moment later going to the small bar near the entrance.”
“I suppose you know what’s good here. What do you recommend?”
“I love their shrimp in green sauce. They serve it with rice. That’s what I’m having.”
“Somehow I don’t find a green sauce appealing. I know I abhor green beer on St. Patrick’s Day.”
“Don’t worry; the green sauce doesn’t have green dye in it. The color comes from the parsley in the recipe. If you order something else, I’ll give you a taste of mine, and you’ll be sorry you didn’t get the green sauce.”
“Sold. I’ll have white wine and shrimp in green sauce. Should I order my own bottle of wine or are we sharing.”
“I could drink the whole bottle, but tonight we’re sharing.”
“You obviously come here quite often.”
She nodded. “I like the food, the service, and the maitre d’ is a fan.”
“And who’s your usual date? From the maitre d’s expression, I seemed to be a surprise.”
She smiled, almost laughing. “He asked me out once. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I lied. I told him I was very involved with a certain man.” Reaching across the table, she touched the back of his hand. “Maybe he thinks you’re that certain man. Of course, he gives that look to every man I come in with.”
“So tell me how often do you invite men out and then pick up the tab?”
“Rarely. Only on special occasions. In fact this is the first such occasion. I did ask a boy out in high school as a prelude to inviting him to be my prom date. He turned me down, but I have to admit I had no intention of treating him. So be thrilled. You’re a first.”
A waiter returned with the wine. He showed the bottle to Ryan prompting Nicky to hold up her hand. “I’m the wine connoisseur at this table,” she said smiling at him.
The waiter’s eye brows flickered upwards in surprise, then he uncorked the bottle, presenting the cork to Nicky who sniffed it, and then he poured a dollop of wine into her glass.
She raised the glass studying the color of the wine for a moment, swirled it, and tasted. “Fine.”
The waiter partially filled their glasses. He pushed the bottle into the ice in a metal bucket on a stand that another waiter had placed beside their table. Each ordered the shrimp in green sauce with rice.
They touched their glasses. “To the girl who has exposed me to an incredible adventure.” He sipped his wine. “I’ve never eaten in a Spanish restaurant before and I’ve never had a girl ask me out on a date and I never saw a belly dancer before you took me to see ‘Fanny.’”
“You’re one lucky duck.”
“Make out you’re Nurse Hancock and you’re in the last chapter explaining the mystery. Tell me why you’ve taken Ryan Garrity on his incredible adventure. Is this a Sadie Hawkins Day event? Or some version of a spinster’s ball? What’s the special occasion? Explain to me why you asked me out? You are not a woman who needs to hunt up a man and pay for everything to entice him into your company.”
She held her right forefinger straight in the air between them. “Never call me a spinster again. Nor an old maid. I’ve given the description of where I am in life a lot of thought. I’m unmarried at 34 so the cruel would call me an old maid behind my back and spinster to my face. I prefer being called a writer. Do you know where the term spinster comes from? The unmarried female who sat a spinning wheel in her father or mother’s house making cloth. And I’ve always attached the word maiden to old maid, as in my maiden aunt.” She smiled. “That implies my aunt is a virgin. I lost that label a long time ago.”
The waiter interrupted Ryan’s immediate response by arriving with bread, the chorizos and Spanish fried potatoes. Conversation was suspended while he filled their empty glasses and moved away from the table.
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