Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

“Is it so wrong I should miss my daughter, my little baby girl?”

“Your daughter is right here,” Rainy says with teeth-gritting impatience.

“My daughter wears a dress when she goes out, especially to the Stork Club. What if Walter Winchell is there and he sees you dressed like a man? And who is this boy you’re seeing? Is he a good boy?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You go out dancing till all hours with a boy you don’t know?”

Rainy’s father sticks his head around the corner. “What boy?”

“He’s a nice Jewish boy,” Rainy says.

“At least there’s that,” her mother says. Her shoulders slump. Her entire body is one big, middle-aged advertisement of disappointment and desolation. This disappointment at least is not really about Rainy, but rather her brother, Aryeh, a Marine, who married his pregnant shiksa girlfriend, Jane, before heading off to the Pacific. Their baby is expected momentarily.

“You look beautiful, even in uniform,” Rainy’s father says, “and I don’t want you looking too beautiful in a dress with legs and arms and legs, giving this boy ideas.” He puts a hand over his heart. “I speak as a man when I say never trust any man.”

Rainy is not worried about Halev Leventhal getting too familiar. What does worry her is speaking to her father. She’s put it off and put it off, each time looking for some perfect moment.

She glances at the wall clock. She has time.

“Get it over with,” she mutters. If she doesn’t get it over with, the anxiety of it will ruin her night with Halev.

Her date with Halev. That’s right, it is a date. Definitely a date.

She waits until her mother decides the living room rug needs a quick vacuuming and pulls her father aside in the hallway outside her bedroom.

“What, you need cab fare to come home if he gets fresh?” He starts to dig in his pants for his wallet.

“Dad. I . . .”

And now he knows this is not about producing a five-dollar bill for cab fare.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“Dad, I love you and nothing will ever change that.”

“Of course nothing will ever change that, what could change that?”

“Vito Camporeale,” Rainy says.

She watches in fascination as various options play out across her father’s face. Should he play dumb? Should he say it’s none of her business?

“Dad, the people I work for want me to talk to the people you . . . someone you may know.”

“Oh, Rainy,” he says, and sags back against the wall, head down on his chest. “Oy vey iz mir.”

“Dad, listen to me. Daddy.” She waits until he raises a face she has never seen before, weary and defeated and ashamed. “Dad, you know the FBI found out and told Army Intelligence. I admit I was shocked, but do you think I really care if you run numbers? Everyone in the neighborhood plays a number.”

He moans and scrubs his face with his palms.

“The army wants something, and they think they can get it from this Vito Camporeale.”

“It didn’t start out like this. I was working for one of our people, a Jewish businessman, but there was some deal and he gave the territory to the dagos. So . . . there is still rent to pay each month.” He shrugs.

Rainy takes a moment to note that most of her father’s shame over running numbers stems from the fact that he’s no longer doing it for a Jewish mobster.

“Listen, Dad, we need to talk about this now while Mother is vacuuming. I don’t want—”