Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“I understand,” I said. “I was in an artillery barrage that I would have killed my best friend to get out of. I apologize for hurting you. We have to find out who put the reel in my car.”

“Put me down, Weldon. Put me down or I will kill you.”

“I will. Don’t hit me again. Roy Wiseheart said somebody would ruin our names and turn us against each other. That’s what they’re doing to us now. But we’re not going to cooperate with them.”

She started to raise her fists again.

“Did you hear me?” I said, taking her by the wrists. “We’re stronger than these men are. Whatever you were forced to do in that camp has nothing to do with who you are. Whatever happened back there is nothing more than a decaying memory. It has no substance other than as a reminder that you were willing to undergo a torment worse than death to save your family.” I could barely restrain her; she had the body and strength of a woman who had done hard physical work all her life. “Don’t fight me, Rosita,” I said. “Nothing can ever come between us. I’m going to find the men behind this. It’s just a matter of time.”

“And do what?” she asked.

“It’ll be a memorable day in their lives.”

I saw the heat go out of her face, the brightness fade in her eyes. “You were a soldier, but you’re not a violent man,” she said. “You must never become one.”

I released her wrists. “You don’t know me.”

“Don’t do their bidding. That’s what they want. They’ll put someone in your path who’s dispensable. They destroy people’s souls. That’s how they work. They’re cowards, all of them.”

“Grandfather went after Pancho Villa. These guys don’t make the cut.” I put my hands on her shoulders and tried to make her smile.

“You don’t know your enemy,” she said.

“What do you think life was like at Saint-Lô and in the Ardennes?”

“The men who put that film in your car are far worse. They’re your countrymen, too. They have greater power than the Nazis because you don’t believe they’re among us.”

“Could be,” I said. “But you and I are going out for dinner. Then we have a date upstairs. And no one, and I mean no one, will ever harm you again.”

I went into the kitchen and picked up the film can from the drainboard and wrapped it in tinfoil and electrician’s tape, then got a shovel out of the tool closet on the back porch.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“To bury this,” I replied. “Maybe it’ll stay in the ground forever. If I find the men behind it, I’ll dig it up and pack it down their throats with a broom handle. That’s not a metaphor.”

MYTHOS IS USUALLY created to justify the self-indulgence of those who control the lives of others. Dalton Wiseheart’s reputation as an iconoclast was no exception. The supposedly humorous stories told about him were not funny. He called up people in the middle of the night and forced them to make business decisions when their minds were fogged and their defenses weak. He took his private plane to pick up business associates in New York or Los Angeles and have them flown to a hangar in a remote section of Nevada or Utah. After he concluded his business, he flew away and let them get home on their own.

He carried a sack lunch to his office. At Christmastime, he gave bottles of deodorant to black employees. One night a year he rented every girl in Norma Wallace’s brothel on Conti Street in New Orleans. He watched 1930s black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoons at a drive-in theater on South Main, where admission consisted of the ten cents a patron was required to spend on a mug of root beer. He left nickel tips at Jimmy’s Coney Island and used a water witch to drill for oil. He spent twenty-six hours at a Reno poker table, then put his six-figure winnings in a canvas bag and stuffed it in the poor box of a rundown church on the edge of town.

He had no pattern. That was obviously his goal. No one knew his thoughts or plans. He could buy a banana republic with a personal check or take a nap in his car at a traffic light; one had about as much importance as the other. Grandfather always said the man to kill you will be the one taking out your throat before you realize you’re wearing a red bib. I think Grandfather may have had Dalton Wiseheart in mind.

I wanted to find Dalton and ask if he had seen my wife’s degradation on the film that he or his minions had gotten from a British or American intelligence agency. I wanted to ask what it felt like to be a coward and a character assassin. I wanted to humiliate him in public and tell him I couldn’t do him physical harm because of his age; otherwise, I would probably take a whip to him.

My head was filled with my own vituperative rhetoric, repressed anger turning in my chest like a set of kitchen knives. Wealth buys not only control and transcendence but inaccessibility. Dalton Wise­heart had turned to smoke.

I tried to get to him through Roy. His wife hung up on me again, and his secretary told me he had left for Los Angeles on the Sunset Limited.

“Oh yes, I think I remember his mentioning that,” I said. “Can you give him a message?”

“He’s still on the train.”

“Is he staying at the hotel he normally uses?”

“Nice try,” she replied.

A week passed. I worked out of our office downtown and left Hershel in charge of our projects in Louisiana. Then I received a call I didn’t expect. “This is Jack Valentine,” the voice said. “I need to talk with you.”

“You want to have another get-together with Bugsy Siegel?” I said.