“Read his two-fourteen,” the deputy said. “A discharge for the convenience of the service. That’s it.”
The deputy walked away. A “convenience of the government” separation from the service could mean anything; 214 was the number of the form.
“What’s Marvin Fogel been in for?” I said.
Benbow looked back at the pages. “Everything these clowns do. Mostly misdemeanors. Six months in Chino for shoplifting.”
“I don’t get it about Doyle,” I said. “He has ‘jail’ written all over him.”
Benbow looked at the pages again. “I hate to tell you the rest of it. The guy has a Bronze Star and was trained as an M.P.”
Chapter Nineteen
MARVIN FOGEL WAS sleeping in an embryonic ball on a concrete bunk in the men’s tank. Stoney was talking to a ballpoint drawing of Kilroy on the wall. Even though the room was cold, Jimmy Doyle was sitting shirtless and without shoes on the bare floor, playing cards with four other men. As soon as he saw me, he was on his feet, the veins in his chest and neck and upper arms cording like green spiderwebs.
“You cocksucker!” he said. He reached down on the floor without bending his knees and picked up a tin cup and flung it at the bars. “I should have known.”
“Known what?” I asked.
“You dropped the dime on me.”
“You got yourself here, Doyle.”
“I remember you better than you think, Broussard. You screwed up at the listening post. You brought all that firepower down on our heads.”
“Did you see Moon Child before they put her in the ambulance?” I said.
“That little bitch with the bangs? No, I don’t know anything about her. I went to sleep. When I woke up, the bus was empty. Wait till I get you outside, motherfucker.”
“Why do you have an interest in the Ludlow Massacre?” I said.
He got closer to the bars, his blue jeans buttoned just below his navel, his skin as smooth as an olive, his short arms pumped like bowling pins. “News for you. I couldn’t care less about a bunch of Communists who got killed fifty years ago.”
“You ever shoot crank?” I said. “I hear it turns your head into a pinball machine.”
His eyes were fecal brown, lidless, the pupils dilated into black headlights. “You’re gonna wish you were back at Pork Chop Hill.”
I leaned against the bars, my head down. I stayed that way a long time, at least in terms of the situation. Why is that? The greatest fear and frustration you can engender in a man like Doyle is to ignore his rage.
“Sorry you feel that way, Doyle,” I said. “I hope things work out for you.”
Then I left him hanging on the bars and walked down the corridor and didn’t stop until I was out of his view. Benbow caught up with me. “What’s the deal?” he said.
“Can you get Stoney out of there without getting him in trouble?”
“The kid with porridge for a brain is going to help us?”
“Yeah, I think he will.”
He rotated his short-brim Stetson on his finger. “Let’s get a cup of coffee,” he said. “I’ve been up since four.”
* * *
WE GOT IT out of the machine by the dispatcher’s office. It tasted like shellac. Benbow waited fifteen minutes, then sent a deputy down to the men’s tank. I could hear the deputy’s voice in the corridor: “Let’s go, kid, you got your phone call.”
“Don’t got a phone call… Don’t got a phone call… Don’t got a phone call,” Stoney replied.
“You get it whether you like it or not,” the deputy said. “Stop talking to the wall and get your ass out here.”