A Matter of Time Page 8

  She remained stubbornly silent. She now posed defiantly, hands on hips.

  “Don’t be upset,” said Annie, fussing round the older woman. “They’re not trying to crucify you.”

  Her reassurances had no effect.

  Harald didn’t help. He played the bully. “The rest of you can be nice if you want. Me, I’ve got questions. And she has the answers.”

  “John....”

  “Just can it for a minute, Norm. Let’s get the shit cleared away. Like, how old are you really, Miss Fiala Groloch? If that’s really your name. Where were you born? Are you really human? Whatever happened to Fian and Fial Groloch? What about Patrick O’Driscol? And Jack O’Brien? Too many disappearing men, Miss Groloch. Too many arrows pointing to you, Miss Groloch. And I, for one, mean to find out what they’re pointing at. Talk.”

  “John, you’re being an ass....”

  “Annie, I’m up to here with this old witch. One way or another, the truth’s coming out. All of it.”

  Not one question elicited a response, nor did Miss Groloch seem much surprised by any of them.

  “John, shut your mouth,” Cash snapped. He sent a look of appeal to Sister Mary Joseph. She was the one who was supposed to apply the pressure.

  But the nun had folded in the crunch. She seemed too terrified to do anything but alternate between signs against the evil eye and crossing herself. The few words that crossed her lips were incantatory Latin.

  Miss Groloch spoke but once, to amplify Annie’s point. “Young man, you are a boor.”

  Cash wondered, again, at the improvement in the woman’s English.

  “We’re just getting mad at each other,” he finally observed. “Let’s cut it off here. Let it rest awhile. Miss Groloch, I’ll take you home now. John, will you take Annie?”

  As he pulled to the curb before the old woman’s home, Cash apologized for the third or fourth time. “I’m truly sorry we upset you.” She had ignored him all the way. He wondered if John and Annie were getting anything from the nun.

  “Sergeant, stop the pretense. Although it is impossible, you think I murdered Jack O’Brien. Without leaving a mark. Then I transported him fifty-four years.” Her accent was thick enough to slice, yet the improved sentence structure persisted. “You’ve made up your mind. Now you are looking for ways to prove your convictions. Let me assure you that, even if I had a way, and wanted to scare a man to death, I would not drop the body behind my own house.”

  “I’ll grant you that much sense. I’ll even confess that I haven’t made up my mind. In fact, there’s no evidence indicating murder. I’m trying to tell you. This isn’t a murder case. Not yet. Like I said downtown, all we’re trying to do is find out who the man was and what happened.”

  “I wish you luck. But you will gain nothing by hounding me.”

  “Maybe not. But I’ll remind you that there’s a connection, a provable connection that’ll hold up in court, between a dead man and a porcelain doll found in your possession.” It would not hold up, really. A good lawyer would get the whole thing laughed out before the prosecutor went before the Grand Jury. But the old woman didn’t need to know that.

  “That’ll have to be explained,” he continued. “Really, what makes your position difficult is your mysteriousness.”

  She started to let herself out. Cash reached over, gripped her left hand with his right. “Please. You read the paper. You should have an idea what would happen if the media got ahold of a story like this. We’re trying to keep them off, but if we don’t get it cleaned up pretty quick, they’ll get their hooks in. They could make a circus out of you. We’re trying to protect your privacy as much as anything.”

  She wasn’t mollified. “Thank you. And good-day, Sergeant.” She took care of the car door and gate herself, leaving Cash with one foot still inside the vehicle as she stamped up her walk, a diminutive Fury.

  Glancing round, Cash saw several neighbors watching. A teenager with ragged hair and beard spat, mouthed a silent “Pig.”

  Halfway to her door Miss Groloch stopped, turned, said, “If you want to find out what happened to Jack, look into the Egan Gang. Carstairs would not.”

  “Egan’s Rats? He was connected?” But she was on her way again.

  Carstairs’s report hadn’t mentioned Egan’s Rats at all. But the gang had been powerful at the time, with Torrio and Purple Gang alliances, and O’Brien’s belonging would explain how he had supported himself. Cash made a mental note to look into it.

  He frowned the long-haired youth into his flat, then dumped himself into the car.

  X

  On the Z Axis;

  21June l967;

  A Company Scale Action

  Whang! Whang! Whang!

  The bullets did more damage to nerves than to the Huey. The AK47 couldn’t punch through the ship’s armor.

  Michael clutched his M-16. John’s fingers were white on his M-79.

  Twenty-two was too young.

  Then Wallace, who was at the open hatch talking back with the M-60, said, “Huh?” and stiffened. The machine gun kept firing, muzzle climbing.

  John staggered over to help Sergeant Cherry drag the dead giant away from the weapon that had been his closest friend. Through the black man’s nap he saw the rotor wash whipping the up-rushing grass of the landing zone.

  The chopper shuddered, shook, flipped. Its main rotor played power mower for a fractional second.

  “Ahshitmyarm!” John screamed as men and equipment piled onto him.

  “Not again!” Michael yelled.

  “Get the fuck out before the fuel goes!” Cherry ordered. “Come on! Move it! Cash, take care of Harald.”

  Oblivious to the gunfire, the men hauled one another through the hatchway. Michael got an arm around John and, crouching, firing with his left hand, dragged his friend away from the wreck. “Medic!”

  Gunships ripped across the sky, sending their best to the little brown brothers behind the treeline. Air cavalrymen poured from the uninjured craft.

  Wham-whoosh!

  The force of the explosion threw them forward.

  “Damn!” Michael snarled. “We didn’t get Wallace out.”

  “He don’t care. He was dead already.”

  “Lyndon Johnson, I love you, mein F? hrer. How’s the arm?”

  “Hurts like hell. I think it’s broke.”

  “That was a good coon. A bad motherfucker.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hope the lieutenant does it. If he don’t, I will.”

  “Write the letter?”

  “Yeah.”

  Wallace had said, if he got skragged, send the announcement to his next of kin, George Corley, care of the Governor’s Mansion, Montgomery, Alabama.

  “What the fuck are we doing here, Michael? We had wives. We had deferments.” Incoming mortar bombs crumped like a beaten bass drum with a loose head.

  “You was the one who wanted to quit school and join the army.” Cash peered into a cloudless sky so bright it hurt. “Here come the navy birdboys.”

  “I wasn’t the one who said let’s volunteer for Nam. I wanted to go to Germany. Remember?”

  Napalm sunflowers blossomed among the trees. They only perturbed the brown brothers more. The volume of fire doubled.

  “Them bastards were laying for us again.”

  Cherry came snaking through the grass. “How’s the arm, Harald?”

  “Okay, except a little broken.” John groaned when the sergeant made sure the bone hadn’t broken through the skin.

  “Where’s the grenade launcher? Lieutenant’s got a machine gun that company says needs skragging.”

  “In the chopper.”

  “Shee-it. Great. Well, Cash, it’s you and me hand-delivering it, then.”

  Michael unconsciously fingered a grenade. “What about John?”

  “He’ll be okay. All he’s got to do is lay here and jack off. The dinks will be hauling ass out of here in fifteen minutes. They don’t, the navy’s going to
splatter them from here to the Cambodian border. And the Arvans are coming up behind them.”

  The Ads began a second pass, this time firing rockets.

  “So take it easy, John,” said Michael, examining his weapon. It had a tendency to jam.

  “You be careful. I need somebody to bring me flowers in the hospital.”

  “Hell of a way to get the Purple Heart.” Cash’s smile was a pale, nervous rictus. “What I’ll bring is that little Le girl you liked so much. The one that works out of the Silver....”

  “Never mind the pussy. Let’s go.” Cherry slithered toward the treeline. Cash scrambled along in his wake. Bullets whipped the grass, harvesting clippings by the pound.

  The gunships took over from the Ads.

  You got to hand it to the dinks, Cash thought. They’ve got balls.

  Cherry waved him forward. “They’re in some kind of bunker, else they’d have been skragged already. I want to come at them from the side, so they don’t spot us.”

  All around the company’s perimeter similar little stalks were underway, driving the Cong back. That he wasn’t the only one crawling into hell did nothing to calm Michael’s nerves, though. It was becoming a very small, very personal war.

  “I’ll put the grenade in. You cover.”

  “Don’t be a hero....”

  “Hey, man. Not me. This here’s Chicken Charlie Cherry talking. If I was in the navy, they’d call me the Chicken of the Sea. But if we don’t get that gun, a lot of guys are going to be dead when the Arvans get here.” He resumed crawling, more cautiously now that they were near the trees.

  Michael crept along behind, remembering his company commander in infantry school, Master Sergeant Heinz Krebs.

  Michael had invariably grandstanded the exercises. And as inevitably, Krebs’s softly spoken admonition had been, “You goddamned idiot. The idea’s supposed to be to make the other jackass die for his country.”

  Krebs had always had an illustrative tale to show his pupils what they should have done. His father had managed to survive six years of the Second World War, most of them in the hell of the Eastern Front. He had been one of few enlisted men to win the Knight’s Cross, Oak Leaves, and Swords to the Iron Cross.

  His son had made an impression on Michael. Cash remembered his lessons once he found himself in a place where the bullets were flying.

  Three dead men lay just behind the treeline, surrounding an American-made 57 mm recoilless rifle. They were so tiny and skinny that they resembled children. And in years, they were. The oldest might have been seventeen.

  “No shells,” Cherry observed.

  “Shit. Think this’s what got the Huey?” Several spent casings lay to one side.

  “Could be. Let’s go.”

  The snarl of the machine gun was loud now. It sounded like one of the Czech jobs, not the Russian. It was arguing with an American counterpart out in the grass. The American fire was all way high.

  “Sixty meters,” said Cherry. “Let me get about fifteen ahead before you follow me. They surprise me, you surprise them.”

  It went like an exercise. Everyone in the area, except the gun crew, seemed to be dead or gone. The Ads and gunships had done a good job.

  Cherry made it to the flank of the low earth and log bunker, prepared a grenade, tossed it through the personnel opening in back.

  Oblivious to the bursts from the American weapon, Cherry sprinted toward Michael.

  A rifle cracked.

  Whumpl

  Several hundred secondary explosions followed as machine gun ammo went.

  Michael put three rounds into the guerrilla who had shot Cherry in the back, then killed the two who, miraculously, staggered from the bunker.

  His weapon jammed.

  As someone tried for a homer with his head and helmet for a ball.

  Feebly, he rolled onto his back, stared into the hate-filled eyes of the fifteen-year-old about to bayonet him.

  An officer in North Viet uniform seized the boy’s rifle.

  Michael fumbled for his own bayonet.

  The officer kicked it away. And allowed the boy to punt his ribs a half dozen times while he ended Cherry’s misery with a pistol round through the brain.

  By the time the ARVN battalion arrived and the body counting began, Michael Cash was three miles into an odyssey that would pause only briefly in a grim little camp in North Vietnam.

  From one point of view, he could be considered lucky.

  He was still alive.

  XI

  On the Y Axis;

  1975

  It was almost quitting time when Cash reached the station, returning from Miss Groloch’s. He was near distraction with the case.

  It had taken Harald as long to dispose of Annie and Sister Mary Joseph. They arrived at the same time. Cash told him about the Egan lead.

  “Egan’s Rats? Don’t think I ever heard of them.”

  “Predecessors of the Syrian Gang, more or less. Goes way back. Bootleggers, train robbers, like that. Some supposedly were the trigger men in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. I was thinking. I know a couple of the old Syrians. They go back far enough. Tommy O’Lochlain in particular might remember O’Brien.”

  The Syrian Gang, with most of its members in their dottage, was probably the last of the Irish outfits. Cash had never learned the reason for their name. Perhaps because there were a number of Lebanese connected.

  They moved into the office. From behind his desk Cash asked, “How’d you do with the sister?”

  “She went completely drifty. Kept babbling about witchcraft and Satan was going to get her. She’s scared to death of that old lady. It’s weird.”

  “What about this morning?”

  “Oh.” He took out his notebook. “Didn’t get much that’s solid. She ought to launder money for CREEP.”

  “She’s got a lot of stock. Old stuff, in rails and arms, A, T and T, companies that have been around as long as she has. She’s also got a growth portfolio that she’s done good with.

  Like Xerox. Her income, about fifty thousand, is all from dividends. She puts most of it back in. Her brokers have a power of attorney. They pay her living money into an account managed by an accounting company. Those guys take care of her bills, taxes, and things. I couldn’t find out if she has a savings or checking account anywhere. Depending on what she’s buying, she pays cash at her door or has the accountants send a money order. Twice a month they send a messenger with cash and any paperwork that needs signing. She sends back written instructions for the accountants and brokers.

  “The brokers are a little scared of her. They’ve had her since the thirties. She never loses money. She doesn’t move often, but when she does she’s always right. When she shakes something out of her portfolio, they pass the word to their other clients. But she’s no Getty. I think because she’s careful. Doesn’t want to attract too much attention.”

  “Maybe Annie and the sister are right. Maybe she is a witch. What about everyday things? Maintenance on the house, appliances, like that?”

  “Per the letters of instruction. The accountants let me look at their records after I started to make a scene. They wouldn’t let me see the letters without a warrant, though. Anyway, she’s had them on retainer since forty-seven, when they took over from another outfit. Since then, nobody’s done any work inside. But she’s had wallpaper, paint, and stuff like that delivered several times. Outside work, even gardening, she contracts. Lawn mowing and stuff is probably done by neighborhood kids. The furnance was converted to oil in fifty-four. The washer and dryer came in sixty-three. On a trade-in. Probably some real antiques. And a TV just the other day.”

  “You said nobody got inside.”

  “Not to paint or anything. But the gas company did the furnace conversion. The appliance dealer did the delivery and installation on the washer, dryer, and TV. You think we could find any of those guys now? She might be Hitler in drag, but there’s no way to pin her down. She’s stayed so insulated
that it’s unreal.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Hell, why else?”

  “So why’s she hiding? From whom? Goddamn, John, if she’s really the same Fiala Groloch who came here a hundred years ago, she’s already outlived anybody who could’ve been after her in the old days. Unless they’re some of those two-hundred-year-old Russians.”

  “Or the Secret Masters?”

  “What?”

  “Just joking. Haven’t you ever heard about the secret society that runs the world? Sometimes they’re supposed to be immortals.”

  “Yeah. And sometimes they’re Communists, Tibetan monks, Rothschilds and Rockefellers, Jews, Masons, Rosecrucians, combinations thereof, or the gang in this Illuminati book Smith was on about the other day. I don’t believe in vast secret conspiracies, John. Not even real ones if I can help it. Wouldn’t it be nice if Patty Hearst and the SLA, or the Manson family, were just some cheap writer’s gimmick? I’ll stick with the time machines, and thank you.”

  “Whatever you want, Norm. But you got to admit that her being a spry hundred-and-thirty-plus takes some explaining.”

  Everything about Fiala Groloch took some explaining, Cash reflected. He was beginning to wish that he had let Railsback bury the whole thing. “You find anything about a demolition contract?”

  “A who?”

  Cash explained about the carriage house and pear tree.

  “No. But that’s something we should be able to trace at City Hall. I was going down tomorrow to check out the house anyway.” He put the notebook away, rose. “But right now I’m getting the hell out of here. Don’t want to think about this anymore for a while. Maybe I’ll take Carrie to see Jaws. They say that’ll blow anything out of your head.”

  “Yeah, me too. I keep finding myself wishing these were the old days and we could just drag her down into the dungeon and get the answers with the whips and chains. The good old Iron Maiden....”