A Fierce Radiance (43 page)

Abruptly, Barnett strode ahead to the Bowery. Lots of taxis, traffic not too bad, Kreindler noted. “Good day to you,” Barnett said over his shoulder as he stepped into the street to hail a cab.

“And to you.” Kreindler watched Barnett get in the taxi and take off in the wrong direction for Penn Station, proving either that he didn’t know any better or that he was eager to escape.

So, Kreindler was back to watching, and waiting. He had plenty of time. The war couldn’t last forever. When the war was over, Kreindler would still be here, but Andrew Barnett would be back teaching economics at Stanford. There was no statute of limitations on murder.

I
n the taxi, Barnett leaned his head back against the seat, filthy as it probably was. He opened the window and let the city sounds wash
over him. The driver turned on Worth, heading to the West Side, making a zigzag uptown, trying to avoid the worst of the traffic.

He’d handled the conversation with Kreindler pretty well, Barnett complimented himself—the part of the conversation regarding Nick Catalano, that is. The basement, okay, Barnett couldn’t be expected to do better with that, he’d never been to a murder scene. The existence of the black market was no surprise to him. After the success in Boston following the Cocoanut Grove fire, penicillin was out of the bag. Black market manufacturing sites were popping up all over. Dr. Bush had decided against trying to control them. The civil health authorities would have to deal with the problem. After all, penicillin wasn’t Dr. Bush’s only project, and it wasn’t Andrew Barnett’s only project, either. All scientific endeavors in the interest of the war came under Bush’s jurisdiction. Penicillin was important, but it was second to their most important project, which was the atomic bomb. In the context of the bomb, this business in Chinatown was nothing but a distraction.

Still, Barnett couldn’t help but wonder: Nick Catalano. Could Sergei Oretsky’s accusation possibly be true? It was awful, of course, and Barnett hated to think he might be working with a murderer who could strike again. But if word about Catalano started going around, how was Barnett supposed to deal with that? Dr. Bush wouldn’t appreciate Catalano as the solution to the problem of Lucretia Stanton’s murder. Dr. Bush might be so unhappy about it that he’d shoot the messenger, as it were, and send Barnett to follow in his brother’s footsteps in the Pacific.

On the penicillin front, things had been going so well recently. From all reports, the penicillin trials in North Africa were a great success. The companies were developing penicillin without patents for the military, while researching other substances in the background: Claire Shipley had proven this, although in retrospect Barnett wished he hadn’t revealed quite so much satisfaction about it when she called to tell him. Dr. Bush’s approach was brilliant, Barnett had to give him that.

The taxi approached West Thirty-first Street. In the winter’s early dusk, Pennsylvania Station loomed before them with its shadowed monumentality.

Nick Catalano, accused of murder. No, no, that could never be allowed. Catalano’s work was essential to the war effort, especially with Stanton out of the picture. A pity about him. A real loss.

A murderer to be brought to justice in the winter of 1942/1943? The entire undertaking was ridiculous.

C
laire.” Should he have referred to her as
Mrs. Shipley
? Nick wondered. The exigencies of address still confused him sometimes. They’d been intimate: that entitled him to use her first name, didn’t it? “It’s Nick Catalano.”

Silence. So, his call was unwelcome.

Finally: “Nick, hi.”

Not even a
how are you?
Or,
good to hear from you
. She was more stalwart than he thought. More stalwart than he was. Tougher. Well, he’d put himself forward this far, he might as well continue: “I’m in New York for a few days. I thought we could have”—he’d intended to ask her to dinner, but in view of her reaction—“coffee together. This afternoon, maybe?”

The call surprised her. But, she thought, how could she
not
agree to see him? She wasn’t cruel; she certainly didn’t think of herself as cruel. And she’d made love with him, after all, although it had counted as nothing. Did that make her cruel? Or just mean that she lived her life the way, well, the way the typical man lived? The shock would be if that night had actually meant something to Nick, Nick with his presumably well-earned reputation for enjoying, so to speak, the company of many women.

Still…he was Jamie’s best friend. Maybe she misjudged this call. Maybe he needed comfort as much as she did.

In the weeks and then months that had passed since the Cocoa
nut Grove fire, when she’d learned that Jamie was dead, she’d forced herself to live from day to day. One day, then the next day, then the next. Christmas came, and she and Charlie were with her father. They were among the most fortunate people in the world, she knew as they gathered around the tree on Christmas Eve: it was December 1942, and they were together. A family. Then on New Year’s, she thought the same: January 1, 1943, and we’re together. What else could she do or think? She couldn’t let Charlie see her collapse in grief.

Nick was waiting for her response. “Yes, Nick, we should have coffee.” She thought through the options. “How about the café at the Hotel Lafayette, at University and Ninth?” That was a good choice, popular and bustling—and several blocks from home.

“In an hour, say?” He tried to be lighthearted about it. He didn’t want to sound desperate. He felt immensely needy. He sensed a great emptiness inside himself, and he didn’t know how he would ever fill it. He couldn’t help but feel the sting, that Claire had deftly arranged for them to meet at the café instead of inviting him to her home.

“Well,” she hesitated, running Charlie’s schedule through her mind. He and Ben were at the movies with Ben’s older brother, so she had a few hours free. “Yes, in an hour would be good.”

“I’ll see you then.”

They hung up. The day was cold but sunny, and she’d enjoy a brisk walk over to Ninth and University. She could do some chores on the way back.

He had reached the café before she did. When she walked in, he was already at a table against the wall. The café’s well-dressed patrons, almost all smoking, were reading newspapers, playing chess, or arguing about one philosophical or political point or another. The café at the Hotel Lafayette was known as a gathering place for
intellectuals
, a term that Claire always thought of in italics, the same way she thought of
artists
, remnants of the old, self-conscious Bohemianism of the Village. Seeing Nick there, watching a chess match at the next table, she
thought he looked forlorn. She regretted the instinctive desire she’d felt to avoid him, to push him away. He was probably suffering as she was. Doubly so, on account of Tia and Jamie both.

She slipped into the seat opposite him. “Hello, Nick. Good to see you.”

He stared at her for a moment. He thought, Jesus, this woman, so easy on the eyes,
and
so intelligent…had Jamie truly known how much he had?

The waitress came over. “Just coffee,” Claire said.

“The same,” Nick said.

Once the waitress had left, Claire leaned toward Nick. “I wonder what kind of coffee it will be,” she whispered with a touch of mischief. Rationing continued to make good coffee almost impossible to find. “Moderately real? Just barely real?” Maybe this way, with banter, she could find a felicitous connection with him. Allow him, somehow, into her heart. Maybe she owed that to Jamie’s memory.

Nick laughed at this, but he couldn’t think of any appropriate response. He’d once had a good deal of banter at his command. He could recall charming many a girl at many a bar. But Claire Shipley wasn’t a girl.

The coffee arrived. Claire sipped it. “It’s truly terrible.” She sipped it again. “I’m going to give it the award for worst coffee in New York City.”

“That sounds a little extreme.” Nick took a sip, then another. “No, you’re too charitable. I’d have to give it the award for worst coffee in history.” There, he’d managed it: he was bantering. Claire, with a slight smile, sat back in her chair, as if suggesting that she was, after all, pleased to be with him.

“Charlie went to the movies.” She didn’t know why she forged on with this tangent. Talk of children was an easy gambit with other parents—parents were always able, if not eager, to talk about their own and other people’s children—but Nick wasn’t a parent. Now that she’d
begun, though, she had to finish. “
Der Fuehrer’s Face
, starring Donald Duck. Last Sunday we went together to see
To Be or Not to Be
. We liked that. It’s very funny. Have you seen it?”

Nick felt totally thrown by this woman. Haltingly, he murmured, “Look, Claire, I want to say—” That was as far as he got. He couldn’t go on.

She reached across the table and placed her hand around his. “What is it, Nick?”

She was concerned for him, he could see that. Her lovely eyes upon him, her expression taking him in, all of him, not just the surface.

He wasn’t in love with her. He just wanted to say that he couldn’t rule it out for the future. They had so much in common. Dead friends, that was what they had in common, but even so. They’d made love to each other, so they also had that, although he realized it wasn’t exactly love they had made.

“Claire, I was thinking we should get to know each other better.” There it was, presented in the most innocuous way he could muster.

She let go of his hand and leaned back in her chair. Her look was more sad than angry. Her look was certainly not encouraging.

“I’m sorry, Nick. I’m so sorry.” And she was sorry. She could offer him so little. She’d given everything to Jamie. But she couldn’t hurt Nick. No, she would never set out to hurt someone. “It’s too soon, for me. To think about getting to know any man better.”

“But we’ve already been close,” he said, a touch of anger, or perhaps simply indignation or disbelief, slipping into his voice.

She didn’t need to defend herself, and she wouldn’t. “Those were terrible circumstances.”

“Maybe we got off to a bad start.”

She smiled at this, and he smiled also.

“We can start over,” he said, his tone lighter. Soon he would be leaving for the Pacific, to continue the clinical trials for penicillin. But
he didn’t tell her this. He didn’t want her to agree to see him out of a sense of duty.

“I wish we could, Nick. Maybe someday.” They sat for a time in silence, sipping the awful coffee and abstractedly watching the chess game at the next table. “I have to go,” Claire said abruptly after glancing at her watch. “Charlie will be home soon.” She opened her purse to pay for the coffee.

“My treat,” Nick said.

“Okay, thank you. You’re going to stay?”

“Yes. I’m thinking of taking up chess.” They both knew it was just a pleasantry, but at least it let them part amicably.

Out on the street, Claire’s sadness mixed with an unexpected sense of well-being. The sun was shining, Charlie would be home soon, they’d have a quiet dinner, just the two of them, and take Lucas for a walk. On her way home, she bought some groceries. A good day, all told. She could be happy with a string of such days.

H
ow are you?” asked Dr. Knowles, the neurologist.

The man opened his eyes. He tried to focus on Dr. Knowles, round and balding, a volunteer, like so many aging physicians at the front. This was a real hospital, albeit one taken over by the American military. He had a vague memory of someone, sometime, saying this hospital was in Algiers. Maybe it was. When he looked out the window he saw palm trees.

“I’ve got a headache. As usual.”

The doctor laughed at him. That’s what came from being a wounded doctor: the other physicians found their entertainment in you. The patient tried to be good-natured about it, even though they were constantly accusing him of being demanding, high-handed, and overly sure of himself. No matter what he said, they accused him of giving them instructions instead of waiting for them to dispense their better wisdom. All this was part of a long tradition, and he didn’t object.

Some time ago, before the patient could really comprehend, Dr. Knowles told him that he’d come through the attack with a bad concussion. Only one bomb had hit the hospital, and the damage, relatively speaking, was slight. Miraculously, the blast had thrown him under a steel surgery table, and the table protected him. Superficial cuts and bruises, an insignificant shrapnel wound in the shoulder. But he must have hit the floor hard, because his memory was gone for a
while. His hearing was still weak from the force of the blast. He had trouble concentrating. Reading was almost impossible.

“Get yourself up and dressed, why don’t you, Stanton. No malingering, now.” Knowles said this with a grin. The infectious disease expert malingering: that was the latest twist in the ongoing drama of his recovery. “You’ve got a visitor waiting to see you. Very exciting. It’s”—a pause for effect, and a slight inflection, as if to indicate the visitor was a girl—“your medic.”

“You’ve decided to let me go back to work?”

The grin turned sly. “Guess we can risk it for a half hour.”

Slowly Jamie got dressed, not in his uniform, but in the loose clothing the hospital provided for those patients who were up and about. The ensemble included felt slippers with cardboard soles. Jamie’s roommate, Fred Paston, was in fairly bad shape, his head entirely wrapped in bandages, including his eyes. Only his mouth and nose were visible. Paston seldom spoke. Following the example of Nurse Nichols, Jamie often spoke to him.

“I’ll be back,” he said as he left the room. Slowly he made his way down the hall to the visiting area. He stood close to the wall, his left hand palm outward, so he could steady himself against the wall if he needed to. When he lifted his arm this way, his shoulder ached a bit from the shrapnel wound; he’d check in with the hospital’s physical therapist about this.

Like the school in Relizane province, this hospital was French colonial, with archways, carved latticework, and multicolored tiles, blues, greens, reds covering the walls. Everything was clean and open, with warm breezes blowing through wide windows on all sides. It was nothing like the hospitals of Philadelphia, or New York.

“Boy, am I glad to see you!” Lofgren exclaimed. And he did look glad. Jamie had forgotten how young Lofgren was, just twenty.

They sat down on army-issue metal chairs just inside a narrow bal
cony filled with pots of geraniums. Jamie looked out at the hospital gardens, glimmering in the sunlight—pure whites, bright greens, dazzling yellows, exaggerated and precise. Too precise. The clarity and precision hurt his eyes. Probably some neurological damage, he self-diagnosed. The garden had a fountain, and the fountain worked, tossing water through the air.

“How’s the work going?” Jamie asked. He spoke against a background of falling water.

“I’ve got the report right here.” Lofgren undid the clasps on his pack and found the report. “I’ve been doing exactly what you taught me. The results have been really good. I mean, I hope you think so. I made this copy for you, sir. You can keep it.”

Jamie assumed this was a nice way of saying that the original had been sent to Washington for Dr. Bush, and for Nick and Chester Keefer. Jamie took the report and leafed through it. It was long, and carefully done. Impressive. He didn’t want Lofgren to know that he couldn’t focus on reading it. “This is terrific, Lofgren. I’ll study it later. In the meantime, let me ask you something. I’ve been a little confused. Anybody else make it out that day?”

Lofgren glanced away. “The patient, sir.”

“The patient?” Jamie wasn’t following this.

“Yes, sir. Keith Powers. No one knows how he made it, he was in real bad shape by the time the…the new team got to him, but they patched him up and now he’s doing good.”

“The new team?” Jamie pushed slowly forward. “What happened to Dr. Mueller?”

“He didn’t make it.”

“Nurse Nichols?”

Lofgren stared out the window. “No. That entire surgical team was wiped out. Except for you, I mean.”

“Me and the patient?”

“Yes, sir. Like I said.” Lofgren covered his awkwardness with ex
citement. “Keith Powers—he’s on the penicillin ward. You can meet him. You’ll read about him in the report, too.”

“Ah.” Jamie felt his energy flow out of him. He was using all his strength just to stay upright. Alice, gone. Pete, gone. But he, Jamie, was sitting here alive in the visiting room of a French colonial hospital with arched windows and a vaulted ceiling in Algiers, enjoying the morning breeze off the Mediterranean. How could he account for that?

“And remember that gangrene patient? Shrapnel in the thigh, a minor wound that turned into gangrene?” Lofgren was saying, filling the silence. “Fully recovered! He’s back at the front. He was awarded a Bronze Star! Your decision to double the dose, that’s what saved him, sir.”

“Thank you, Lofgren. You took care of him, too. In fact, you must have seen him through the worst of it, after the bombing raid.”

Lofgren blinked in a kind of embarrassed gratitude. “You coming back to work soon?” Lofgren looked suddenly crestfallen, like he might cry. He was no more than a boy, far from home, and Jamie was old enough to be his father.

“I’ll be back soon. As soon as I can. Can’t be spending my time lounging around here.” He stood. He swayed, and Lofgren reached for his arm. Jamie pushed him off. With that, Lofgren looked hurt. Jamie was filled with regret but made a joke of it.

“Got to get used to my own two feet, eh, Lofgren? Got to build up my strength, to get back sooner.”

“Yes, sir.” Lofgren was happy again.

“You’ve done a great job. I’ll make sure the commanders know that you’re the one who carried this forward while I was recovering.”

“Thank you, sir. Well, I’ve got to get back. Almost time for the next round of shots. We moved to a different location, just a half hour from here.”

“Tell me something, Lofgren, before you go. What’s the date?”

“The date?”

“The neurologists keep asking me to tell them the date—it must be on their checklist for making sure I haven’t lost my mind. But since they never tell me what the date is, I never know the correct answer.”

“January fifth.”

A long time had passed. “So I missed Christmas.”

“Guess you did, sir. We’ll have another celebration in the ward when you get back.”

“Thanks. I’ll be counting on it.”

“Good-bye, then, sir.”

“Good-bye for now.”

Jamie watched Lofgren go. Then he walked slowly to his room.

“I’m back,” he said to Paston, immobile on his bed. Jamie stood at the window and stared out at the palm trees and at the Mediterranean beyond.

Chance—that’s all it was. Governing who lived and who died. He wouldn’t let himself think about Alice, or about Pete. Instead he’d think about returning to work. He’d have time enough to think about the dead when he returned to America.

Home. All at once he knew he’d make it, just as surely as a few months ago he’d known he wouldn’t. Why? He had no idea. A conversion inside himself. Inexplicable.

January 1943. He’d missed Christmas and New Year’s both. He needed to write a letter to Claire. Surely he could manage a few sentences. The prospect of this task gave him more energy than he’d had in a long while.