Blood Alone (27 page)
WITH GELA AND Porto Empedocle in our hands, not much was still coming in via the beachhead. The mountains of supplies were mostly gone, moved inland with the troops. I drove past the field hospital where I’d awakened, the single tent now multiplied by four, all connected and marked with large red crosses on a white background. It was quieter now, no rush of wounded on stretchers, no kids left on the ground to die alone. Maybe making a deal with the devil was worth it if it kept a few GIs out of that place and above ground.
Was Signora Patane still coughing up blood in her bed? Or had she died in the night, unaware of the quiet Don Calo had ensured for her last moments? I couldn’t understand why anyone, even a crime lord like Don Calo, had to be convinced to avoid bloodshed. Why had I endured all this to convince Don Calo to save the lives and homes of his own people? It seemed the more power people had, the less they were likely to use it to make something good happen, as if they needed to bank it for a rainy day. I hadn’t seen it rain in Sicily yet.
The Signals Company was easy to find. More wire had been strung, and tall poles had been erected along the shore road to carry it. All lines led to the communications center, which sprouted aerials and antennas from tents, trailers, and trucks. I parked the jeep and looked for an officer.
The sides of the tents were rolled up to allow the sea breeze to provide ventilation. GIs scurried around tables piled high with communications gear, others sat at switchboards and radios, listening and transmitting with an intensity that was electric. Static crackled in the air.
“Can I help you, sir?”
I nearly jumped, but instead managed to turn and see who had surprised me. It was an MP, his white belt and painted helmet gleaming. I remembered all the things Dad and Uncle Dan had told me about the military police in the last war, but decided not to hold it against this guy.
“I’m looking for the officer in charge.”
“And who might you be?”
I studied him for a moment while trying to perfect the kind of look Harding gave me when he wanted me to shake in my boots. He was a buck sergeant, a bit on the short side, which probably accounted for his chosen branch of service. As an MP, he could be a big guy, even at five foot two.
“I would be a lieutenant, looking for another officer,
Sergeant
,” I said, leaning on his rank to make my point as obvious as possible.
“No problem, sir. I can take you to the CO, but my orders are to check out everyone entering the area. We ’ve had some trouble lately.”
“What sort of trouble, Sergeant?” I looked over his shoulder and saw several other MPs patrolling the area. I picked up another one inside the main tent. This was more than a normal guard detail.
“If you don’t mind, Lieutenant, tell me what you’re doing here first.”
“I’m Lieutenant Billy Boyle, attached to Seventh Army HQ.” I turned to show him my worn shoulder patch. “I’m here to ask a few questions about Lieutenant Andrews.”
“He bought it a few days ago, so he won’t be able to help you, Lieutenant Boyle.”
He started to walk away, dismissing me as if I were the enlisted man and he the officer. Not caring much for officers above the rank of second lieutenant—which meant all others—I would have admired his style if I hadn’t clearly said I had questions about Andrews, not for him. I decided to try a little Harding out on him.
“Sergeant!” I barked, loud enough to draw stares and send privates scurrying out of my line of sight. “Stand at attention!”
“Yessir.” He did, but without turning to face me. Well , my fault for not giving the order. I walked around him, taking my time and studying his uniform. It was clean, his boots were polished, and his haircut recent. He was braced, chin up, chest out, the perfect example of a tin soldier.
“Have you put in for transfer to a line company, Sergeant . . . what’s your name?”
“Cerrito, sir. No, I haven’t. I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand, what?” I linked my hands behind my back and marched back and forth in front of him, playing the martinet and enjoying it a bit too much.
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“Well, I’ll explain, Sergeant Cerrito. I bet you’ve been itching to get up to the front lines. I bet Bouncing Betty mines and German 88s don’t scare you one bit. But your CO can’t do without you, right? So you figure to piss me off enough to get you transferred. You probably figured it out as soon as you saw my HQ patch.”
“Bouncing Betty? Sir?”
“A mine, Sergeant. You set it off and it launches up about waist-high and explodes. Good news is that it hardly ever kills you.”
“OK, sir. I don’t need to hear the bad news, I get it.” Cerrito was still at attention, but a line of sweat was working its way down his temples. He spoke through gritted teeth, and I knew he was as afraid of the other men’s hearing him give in as he was of making Betty’s acquaintance.
“Stand at ease, Sergeant Cerrito, and let’s start over.” I clapped him on the shoulder so everyone could see we were pals.
“You look like you could use a cup of joe, Lieutenant. How about we sit and talk?”
I must have had dog tired written all over my face. Coffee and a seat that wasn’t in a vehicle driving on a bad road sounded fine.
“Lead the way, Sarge.”
My new best friend crooked his finger at me and led me over tent pegs and lines drawn taut. Eyes from inside the tents glanced out from beneath canvas flaps and quickly looked away. Cerrito began to whistle a tune, showing how casual this all was. “Mister Five by Five,” a song about a singer in Count Basie’s band who was as wide as he was tall. I remembered that Mister Five by Five had quite a line of jive, and wondered what made Cerrito pick that tune.
He was a pretty good whistler, and I was humming the tune myself by the time we came to a long tent with all the flaps rolled up. I could tell it was a mess tent by the smell, which wasn’t a compliment to the chef. Burnt toast, soapy water, and soggy eggs combined their odors into a single nauseating smell. A GI dumped a garbage can full of greasy water in front of us and we sidestepped the scummy remnants of a few hundred washed-out mess kits. Breakfast was over, and the cooks were cleaning up and preparing lunch. Dishing out army chow to GIs who had to wait in long lines for it was probably the most disheartening job on the island. No one had much good to say about dehydrated potatoes, eggs, and milk.
Cerrito nodded to a cook in a white T-shirt and apron who had the look of another noncom. The cook nodded back, ash from the cigarette hanging from his lips flavoring whatever was in the aluminum pot he was stirring.
“Hungry?” said Cerrito. “Sir?”
“Coffee will do,” I said.
We poured steaming, thick coffee out of a pot scorched black from the embers of a dying fire. It smelled like wood smoke and eggshells. We sat on crates of U. S . Army Field Ration C under camouflage netting, the dappled shade a relief from the increasing heat.
“So who ordered you to give the cold shoulder to anyone asking questions?” I asked, blowing on the hot coffee.
“Just doing my job, Lieutenant,” Cerrito said.
“Does your job include protecting a murderer?”
“Who said anything about murder? We’re here to protect the equipment and personnel, that’s all. That means limiting information about what goes on here.”
“Who are you protecting them from?”
“Thieves, black marketeers, you name it. The Mafia is supposed to be active around here too,” Cerrito said.
“Yeah, so I heard. Who told you all this? Who sent you here?”
“Listen, Lieutenant, you got me in a tough spot,” Cerrito said, moving closer and leaning in as he glanced around to see if anyone was listening. “You’re only a second louie, but you’re from HQ, so maybe you could send me wherever you want. But it was a major who gave me my orders, and they were to keep everyone away from Signals Company, and not to answer any questions. I asked what the problem was, and he told me about thieves stealing communications gear, and how we had to keep a lid on things. That’s all. If I spill more to you, then I’m in dutch with the major.”
I drank the coffee. Cerrito was nervous, but not big-league nervous. That comment about the Mafia would not have come out so easily if he were involved in any of this. There was no tell, no flickering of the eyes, no rubbing the nose, no involuntary gesture to show he was concerned about how that statement would sound to me. I had to gamble that he was being straight with me and guilty of nothing more than being a pompous MP afraid of being sent to the front. That meant I had to scare him more than the major did.
“I don’t think you need to worry about him, Sarge,” I said, giving him a knowing smile. “Didn’t you think it was odd that a major from AMGOT was giving orders to guard a Signals Company?”
“How did you know that?” Cerrito’s eyes widened, as if I had guessed the card he’d picked out of a deck.
“You don’t think I happened to stop by today, do you? You look too smart for that.”
“I did think about it, but the army doesn’t always make sense, does it?”
“No,” I agreed. “But in this case, you were on the right track. Who else knew about the orders?”
“Besides Major Elliott?”
Bingo.
“Yeah. Besides him,” I said.
“Captain Stanton, CO of the Signals Company. No one else.”
“OK, Sarge, that’s a help. Now I want you to keep this conversation between us. Can you do that?”
“Sure I can, sir.”
Damn straight he would. He was willing to let the officers fight it out among themselves.
“Good. I don’t see any reason to include your name in my report. So far, anyway.”
By the time I finished my coffee he was ready to give up his grandmother if it would get me out of his hair quicker. Cerrito even took my mess tin and washed it out for me. Major John Elliott, Civil Affairs Officer, had originally been with AMGOT HQ in Syracuse, but was now in Gela, as CAO in charge of the Agrigento and Caltanissetta provinces. It put him right in the thick of things. I listened to Cerrito whistle again as he walked away. This time it was “Shoo-Shoo Baby” by the Andrews Sisters, about a sailor saying goodbye to his girl. I couldn’t read much into that one, but damned if he wasn’t a good whistler.
“I’M SORRY, LIEUTENANT, but you’re not authorized to enter,” the MP said. He held his carbine at port arms, blocking me from the tent. He was polite, none of Cerrito’s initial insolence about him. I took him more seriously. Besides, he was bigger than me. A lot bigger.
“That’s Captain Stanton in there, isn’t it? I can see him from here,” I said. A private had pointed him out to me moments before. Stanton had bright orange-red hair, a hard guy to miss with his helmet off.
“This is the Code Section, sir. Only authorized Signals personnel may enter. No exceptions, not even for lieutenants from headquarters.”
I was sure that last part was sarcasm, but I let it go. He was a corporal, and I couldn’t blame him for giving an officer a hard time when he could. And, like I said, he was big, a head taller than me and about twice as wide in the shoulders. The carbine looked like a peashooter in his massive hands.
“I’ll come back later,” I said. He wasn’t interested in my plans for the day.
The next tent was larger than the code tent, and unguarded, so I decided to try my luck there. A crude sign painted on a plank of wood read MESSAGE SECTION. No one stopped me or even paid attention to me as I walked in. Despite the rolled-up canvas flaps, it was still hot inside. The tent was thirty feet long, with all sorts of tables lined up on either side—folding tables, a fancy dining-room table, a door on a couple of sawhorses—all holding communications equipment that crackled and buzzed with static. Wires and cables wound their way from one table to another, connecting to other cables that snaked out of the tent to the tall camouflaged antennas outside. A teletype machine clacked away while GIs sat at radios and switchboards, connected to someplace far more dangerous.
“Love Mike, this is Sugar Charlie. Over. Love Mike, this is Sugar Charlie. Over.” The operator leaned over, pressing the headphones against his ear, straining to pick up a response. He slammed a pencil down on a blank pad, leaving a sharp mark like a ricochet.
“Words twice, Dog Victor, words twice,” the guy next to him shouted, grimacing at the noises that made him ask for the transmission to be repeated. Mortars maybe?
Tension throbbed in the hot air trapped under the canvas roof, the smell of sweat, cigarette smoke, and stale coffee making me wish I hadn’t come in.
“Anything from Love Mike?” A lieutenant, his sleeves rolled up above his elbows, leaned over the operator who had been listening for Love Mike’s call sign.
“Nothing. Maybe their radio’s out. Maybe.”
“Dog Victor?” the officer asked the other GI.
“I couldn’t make him out,” he said, a weary sigh escaping his lips. “Explosions. Then gunfire. They’re off the air.”
“Where is all this going on?” I asked. The operators went back to their headphones as the lieutenant took notice of me for the first time.
“Gangi, north of Enna. Those call signs are the First and Second Battalions of the Sixteenth Regiment, and they’re in trouble. Who the hell are you?”
“Billy Boyle, from Seventh Army HQ. I have a few questions about Lieutenant Andrews. You have a minute?”
“Sure,” he said, extending his hand. “Frank Howard.”
“You in charge here?”
“I have the Operations Platoon. We do most of the work here, except for coding. Captain Stanton takes care of that. Let’s talk over here.”
Howard was a second lieutenant, just like me, the lowest of the high. Close-cropped sandy hair, a sharp nose, and blue eyes with dark bags drooping below them. He had a distinct New York accent, the word “work” coming out “woik,” the way the Three Stooges said it. I’d taken enough guff about my Boston accent that I didn’t comment on it. I figured if he dropped a few r’s, we added them in Boston, so it all worked out. Maybe we could argue baseball, though. That might be fun except that, last I heard, the Yankees were leading the division.
“You’re from New York?”
“Neither of us can hide where we’re from, can we?”
“You got that right. What did you do before the war?”
“Crane operator, mostly on the docks. My old man was in the union, so I got my card and managed to work fairly regular. How about you?”
“I was a cop. My dad too.”
“Doesn’t hurt to have connections, especially when times are tough.” True enough. Plenty of guys without them got no work at all during the Depression. Depending on family connections might not be fair, but it sure beat standing in a soup line.
Howard stopped to talk to a noncom and went over a sheet of orders with him. He had a few years on me and seemed firmly in control of this operation. He finished with the noncom and I followed him to the end of the tent, where he had his office set up. An empty spool of communications wire on its side supported a field desk, one of those portable boxes that opened to show a variety of drawers and cubbyholes, big enough to hold all the forms, stamps, and red tape needed to run a company. A field telephone and tools rested on another upturned spool, and a wool blanket hung heavily from a line strung from the end pole, half hiding a cot stuck in the corner of the tent.
“All the comforts of home,” I said, as he sat in a swivel chair that looked like it came from a lawyer’s office. He pointed to a crate of rations, 10-in-1, for me to perch on.
“Nothing like you boys at HQ enjoy, I’m sure,” Howard said, lighting up a Lucky without offering me one, and blowing blue smoke above my head. He eyed me with a studied wariness that told me he hadn’t found lieutenants from headquarters of much use in this war.
“I’ve been too busy lately to check out the accommodations,” I said, ignoring the jibe. “I’ve been looking into something that may involve Lieutenant Andrews. Did you know him well?”
“We went through training together at Camp Gordon. He had the Supply Platoon, and did a fine job. We weren’t close, but friendly enough. Poker games, baseball, stuff like that.”
“You don’t seem surprised I’m asking about him,” I said.
“I knew somebody would, sooner or later.”
“Why?”
“Because of what he did to my corporal. He got him killed.”
I tried not to jump out of my seat. This was more than a lead, it was a real clue. “Do you mean Hutton? Aloysius Hutton?”
“Yeah, Hutton. He didn’t like his first name much.”
“I thought it was a good solid name,” I said, thinking about what it had been like to be without a name, when I gave Hutton’s to Clancy and Joe, and how speaking it had felt like ashes in my mouth.
“You know what happened to him?” Howard asked.
“I was there when he died,” I said. “But first, tell me what Andrews had to do with getting him killed.”
“So they even shanghaied a headquarters louie up on Biazza Ridge?” He gave out a sad laugh as he shook his head in disbelief at the thought of a staff officer on the front line. “Andrews was in charge of our supplies, obviously. Rocko Walters was a sergeant who ran the division’s Supply Company, and I mean ran it. His CO was a goof-off who left him in charge of the whole show.”
“I met Rocko too. When a paratroop officer came looking for men and supplies for Biazza Ridge, he vanished.”
“Sounds like him. He was a rat, and someone finally caught up with him.”
“I know,” I said, letting it go at that.
“Anyway, Andrews had to go through Rocko for our requisitions.
Back in Tunisia, I noticed radios starting to go missing. They were marked down as lost or broken, but I knew we’d never gotten them.”
“Rocko was selling them on the black market,” I suggested.
“That would have been my bet, but I couldn’t prove it. I think Rocko gave Andrews a big payoff and did all the work, to get him hooked.” He ground out his cigarette and spit out a piece of stray tobacco.
“And then put the squeeze on him,” I said.
“You got it, junior.”
“But how did Hutton fit in?”
“Hutton was a genius with radios and telephones. He could repair any damn thing, using spare parts from German equipment if he had to.” “But what would that mean to Rocko?”
“My guess is, it meant Rocko could communicate with anyone he wanted, anywhere.”
“You mean anywhere you had wire strung, right?”
“Come with me. It’s easier to show you,” he said.
I followed him out to a smaller tent, about eight by ten feet, not far from Howard’s office at the end of the Message Section tent. He pulled open the front flaps and tied them back. Except for a cot stuck in a corner, it looked like a warehouse for radio and telephone parts. A workbench at the far end was littered with tools, wire, tubes, and the guts of gadgets I couldn’t identify. A switchboard sat next to an SCR-300 radio, and other electrical hardware encased in canvas or wood with U. S . Army markings stood stacked shoulder-high. I looked more closely at a device connected to the switchboard. It was a long wooden case with black dials set into it and connectors for a dozen or so wires along the top. The faceplate was marked in German.
“What the hell is all this?” I asked.
“Hutton was a loner, and he liked to tinker, so I gave him his own workshop. He came up with some ingenious stuff. This is a BD-72, our standard field switchboard. We can bring in twelve lines and route calls between them. But, like you said, it’s only for calls on our wire. We can connect two of these and increase the capacity, but it’s still a closed loop.”
“But Hutton tinkered with it, right?”
“He sure did,” Howard said, with a hint of pride as he tapped the unit next to the switchboard. “This has some god-awful long German name, which translates to something like Special Exchange Telephone Interface. See the line coming out of it?”
I nodded, following the black wire up and out the rear of the tent, where it was tied together with a bundle of other insulated wire.
“That line is spliced into the civilian telephone network. With this dialer, also German, you can call any number in Sicily.”
“Who did Hutton talk to on this thing?” I was having a hard time imagining Aloysius Hutton as the kingpin of a Mafia conspiracy, huddled in here calling mobsters all over Sicily.
“I don’t think he talked to anyone. He didn’t speak Italian, and he wasn’t much of a talker anyway.”
“But he could make a call and route it to anyone connected through this switchboard?”
“Sure,” Howard said. “Or anyone connected through any of our switchboards.”
“Like the divisional Supply Company?”
“Definitely, along with division HQ, Corps HQ . . .”
“What about AMGOT?”
“Yep, we have them too, the Syracuse HQ and the Gela Civil Affairs Office,” Howard said. “Connect this with our high-frequency radio, and I could give Ike himself a call in Algiers.”
“Get much radio traffic between AMGOT and the 45th?”
“Fair amount. The Civil Affairs officers call in from towns all along our front.”
“What about a Major Elliott?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen his name on a lot of messages. Some coded, some in the clear.”
Now I knew why Rocko was so broken up to hear Hutton had been killed. Hutton was his way to contact Vito, Elliott, and whoever else was in on this.
“So Lieutenant Andrews arranged for Hutton to be assigned to Rocko at the supply depot, so he could keep an eye on him and have him make a call whenever he needed to,” I said, spelling it out. “But Hutton was in
your
platoon—right?—not Andrews’s. How come he was sent to work for Rocko?”
Howard answered, “I didn’t have any choice about assigning Hutton. Orders came from division.”
“From who, exactly?”
“Don’t know. That’s what Captain Stanton said. He wasn’t too happy about it either. You figure something funny is going on here?”
“Rocko was killed. Murdered,” I added, stressing the distinction.
“You think Hutton was mixed up in something illegal?”
“Hard to figure him for a crook.”
“I agree. He was a good kid. You got any idea who’s behind all this?” “I’m working on it.”
“What a waste,” Howard said as he looked at the contents of the tent, the tools lined up neatly on the workbench, dust starting to settle on the hardware.
“Just so you know, Hutton did OK up on Biazza Ridge. He stood his ground.”
“Good for him. I hope he didn’t suffer when he got it,” Howard said.
“No,” I said, remembering the hole in his forehead and how he had quietly slumped over his rifle. “I don’t think he knew what hit him.”
“Thanks. You seem OK for a headquarters louie.”
“All depends on who you ask. Mind if I look around here a bit?”
“Knock yourself out, pal. Just don’t make any long-distance calls.”
Howard left and I began to search the tent. For what exactly, I had no idea. With so much funny business going on, there was sure to be some sign of something shady, if only I could recognize it when I saw it. There were technical manuals stacked everywhere, so I flipped through the pages, looking for notes or maybe Mussolini’s phone number. A couple of well-read
Popular Mechanics
issues from 1940 had loose pages falling out. I lifted up every piece of equipment and looked underneath. Nothing but dust. Checked the few items of clothing that were left scattered around and felt under the cot frame. Nothing but a wad of chewing gum.
There weren’t any of Hutton’s personal effects; those must have been picked up to be shipped home. If there was anything out of place, Howard would probably have noticed. Which meant if Hutton had left anything, he’d had a hidey-hole. I tried to put myself in his place. A loner, he liked to tinker with things. I remembered his hands were smooth, with long tapering fingers. Perfect hands for working with tubes and connections in cramped spaces. He didn’t talk much, didn’t bunk with anyone, so he probably didn’t have a lot of pals. Where would he place his trust? What would seem to be a safe place to him?
I picked up a thin screwdriver from the workbench and eyed the piles of equipment. There were a lot of screws holding these things together, and I tried to guess which one he’d pick. It had to be one he knew no one else would use. The BD-72? No, I’d seen half a dozen others in operation in the Message Section tent. Someone might need a replacement and take his. But no one would need German equipment, right? I got to work on the dialer and the exchange device, unscrewing a wooden side panel from each and looking inside. Nothing. I screwed the sides back on and decided Hutton would not have risked taking these things apart—too many things might go wrong.
