XPD

25

All the efforts of British Secret Intelligence Service employees in the Los Angeles area to erase Paul Bock’s message from Charles Stein’s answering machine had come to nothing. The machine itself, manufactured by a small factory in San Diego, was advertised as the most reliable domestic machine on the market. One aspect of this reliability, upon which the copywriter expended much care, was the impossibility of accidental erasure of any incoming message. The ‘Executive Type II’ even had an erase head that could be unplugged and locked away elsewhere. It was a facility that appealed to Charles Stein, who believed his son Billy only too likely to erase vital messages accidentally. As for the attempt to get a field agent posing as a telephone repairman into the Stein residence, this too was doomed to failure. Stein’s housekeeper had long since discovered that the best way to live in peace with her employer was to take his instructions literally. So when a young man, bedecked with tweezers, pliers and reels of wire, spoke to her over the voice box at the front entrance, she told him that he could not come in. He told her that her telephone was not working properly and, when she proved indifferent to this, insisted that the fault was going to affect all the phones in Cresta Ridge Drive. ‘You’ll have to come back some other day,’ she told him. Charles Stein had said let no one in the house, and that is exactly what she intended to do. When the bogus telephone man persisted, she threatened to call the telephone company and complain of his behaviour. It was at that stage of the operation that all attempts to interfere with the answering machine were abandoned.

Charles Stein arrived home at eleven a.m. He was in a bad mood and his housekeeper did not ask him about anything except what he would like to eat. It was only after she served his soup that Stein confided to her that he had been arrested for drunken driving by the California Highway Patrol while moving decorously along the number two lane of the Harbor Freeway at no more than forty miles an hour.

The housekeeper nodded and remained silent except for some sympathetic noises that semanticists call ‘purr sounds’.

‘Me drunk!’ said Stein indignantly.

‘Did they put you on the breathalyzer?’

‘And it registered nothing. I’d had only two glasses of white wine with an old pal. You know me, Mrs Svenson, did you ever see me drunk? I practically never touch hard liquor. I don’t even like the taste of it any more.’

‘And they said you were speeding?’

‘They said going at a careful forty miles an hour is the sure sign of a drunk, that’s what they said.’

The housekeeper made some more tutting sounds.

‘Erratic driving, unsafe lane change… took me down to the county jail near Union Station… how do you like that?’

‘It’s terrible, Mr Stein.’

‘I demanded a blood test. I know the law. I demanded a blood test. They said they couldn’t get the damned police doctor. Maybe he’s drunk too, I told them. Finally the new shift came on, and the watch commander had me released.’ Stein looked at his housekeeper and shook his head. ‘I’m mad, Mrs Svenson. I’m telling you, I’m really sore about the way I’ve been treated.’

‘Eat your meal, Mr Stein,’ she said. ‘Try and forget the whole thing.’

Stein tore his bread roll to pieces and began to eat it with his soup.

‘Those CHP guys can never admit they’re wrong, you know,’ Stein told his housekeeper. ‘They held me overnight, threatening me with all kinds of driving charges. Then, this morning, they released me. Big deal. I go to jail for doing nothing and they’re kind enough to release me.’ He finished his soup in silence. ‘Where’s Billy?’ he said as he pushed the plate away. Stein always pushed empty plates away. He needed a space on the table in front of him; he found plates and glasses-especially empty ones-constricting.

‘Gone down to the boat,’ said the housekeeper.

‘Again?’

‘He’s practising for the race next month. It’s the championship. You know that, Mr Stein. Billy never misses that.’

Stein looked up, realizing that Billy Stein had converted another female to his cause, whatever that might be. ‘Time that kid got a job,’ said Stein.

‘I’ll get you the rest of your lunch,’ said the housekeeper.

Stein soon finished the grilled lamb chops and hashed brown potatoes which his housekeeper had calculated would provide the fastest satisfactory meal, and thus the fastest way to return her employer to his usual calm demeanour. But Stein had pushed aside the fried potatoes, choosing instead to eat the grilled tomato flavoured with some fragments of basil from the garden. But now his resolution weakened as he recalled the indignity of being handcuffed, stripped, searched, photographed and fingerprinted. He put the potatoes into his mouth with nervous rapidity. ‘And then tossed into the drunk tank like a common criminal.’

‘You should have phoned me, Mr Stein.’

‘No good phoning you,’ growled Stein, still continuing to eat the potatoes. ‘They only allow you one completed phone call and I was chasing my goddamned lawyer from bar to restaurant to night club.’

He finished the potatoes, took the slice of buttered toast and got to his feet. The smell of the jail was still on him. ‘I’ve got to take a tub,’ said Stein. ‘Change out of these stinking clothes.’

‘It must have been terrible for you, Mr Stein.’

‘Goddamned Fascists,’ said Stein. ‘I told them that too, I said, I fought a war to get rid of Fascists like you. I told them.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They laughed,’ said Stein. He shrugged. He was getting used to people laughing about the war. Billy Stein had been laughing about it for years. Why get mad because other men’s kids laughed too?

Stein got to his feet, pulled off his tie and loosened his shirt collar. Restlessly, he went to the fireplace and moved some of the china ornaments as if looking for something.

‘Are you all right, Mr Stein?’ the housekeeper asked. She had never seen him like this before.

‘They laughed,’ said Stein again. His talk with Jerry Delaney had reawakened his memories; his night in the county jail had given him too much time to brood. There was the other half of the story. He remembered telling it again and again to the untidy little captain from the judge advocate’s staff who had shouted with rage and called Stein a liar.

Delaney had told the same story of course. Delaney was his buddy, a tall gangling youth with a long neck and the awkward physique of a boy who had not yet grown to manhood. Major Carson was the only old-timer with the column that day. Carson had fought in France in the First World War. He was a plump, grey-haired man, his nose and cheeks red from the cold, early-morning parade grounds and evenings of cheap booze which had made up his years in the peacetime army. ‘No need for binoculars,’ he had told Lieutenant Pitman when they saw the smoke. ‘The Germans are over the next hill, kicking shit out of the supply column.’ He parked his chewing gum on the armour plate and looked down at his map case as the next salvo sounded. Stein was watching him closely; he did not flinch. The inquiry had tried to brand Carson as a coward, but a coward would have remained with the column, not tried to take a jeep across the open country to tell the battalion what was happening. ‘I’ll need a driver,’ said Major Carson.

‘Take young Stein,’ said Lieutenant Pitman. ‘The kid’s too young for combat.’

‘They all are,’ said Carson without looking up from the map. ‘And if the Germans are this far… ’ he stabbed at the shiny transparent map cover, ‘the whole damn shooting match is surrounded-CCA, regimental combat team, the whole works… shit! The top brass are as dumb as assholes, Pitman.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Pitman, who had consistently tried to reduce such disrespect for authority amongst his men.

Carson looked at him and smiled. Pitman was ten years older than most of these kids and trained at the Point, but his experience of real soldiering was pitifully inadequate. His uniform was brand new, his tie folded neatly into his shirt, his waterproof jacket without a stain. Pitman was smaller than the rest of them, and the heavy automatic pistol and full canteen of water sagged on his belt. His fieldglasses were like a millstone round his neck. As his eyes swept quickly round the horizon-seeing only the black stony hills that had put them out of radio contact with headquarters-his steel helmet clanged against the armour plate of the M-3.

Major Carson put an arm round his shoulder in a gesture that was at once paternal and confiding. ‘You get these kids down into the gully, Lieutenant, and pull back parallel to the Sbeitla road.’ There was more smoke followed by the drumbeats of the guns. ‘Could be the Germans will try to push through here all the way to Kasserine.’

‘Kasserine?’ said Pitman. It was unthinkable.

Carson was fingering the map again. His nails were worn short, his hands stained with oil and nicotine, and his fingers marked with tiny scars. They were the hands of a man who liked to take engines apart. ‘Don’t get any ideas about winning the Medal of Honour. They’ll elbow this little caravan without pausing. Go back along the gully, and get the hell out of here.’

‘We’re tank destroyers,’ said Pitman. ‘You want us to run?’

‘Get my jeep, kid,’ Carson shouted to Aram Stein. To Pitman he said, ‘Get these museum pieces out of here, Lieutenant. And that’s a goddamn order. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Pitman giving the major an exemplary salute. Carson climbed into the jeep without even looking back.

Lieutenant Pitman took off his helmet and ran a hand round the sweaty leather of its liner before putting it back on his head and tugging the chinstrap tight. He was on his own now; commanding the whole column in the face of the enemy, just as he had so often dreamed of doing. ‘There’s a soldier coming up the track,’ he said but his words were drowned by another explosion, this time from down the hill. Only Stein realized what had happened, perhaps because he had spent so much time dreading it. ‘ Aram,’ he shouted. He jumped out of the M-3 with uncharacteristic agility, and ran down the hill like a madman. ‘Don’t move, Aram. I’m coming. Stay just where you are. I’m coming, Aram. Aram!’

But Aram Stein would never move again, neither would Major Carson. The jeep had hit a Teller mine half a mile down the track, its wreckage was bent and the tyres aflame. The bodies were cruelly dismembered. ‘ Aram!’

‘Can I get you anything else?’ asked the housekeeper.

‘I’m going to have to talk to Billy,’ Stein told her. He had pampered the boy too much; he must start involving him in the real problems. Stein was tired. From now on Billy would have to help, really help.

‘Yes, Mr Stein,’ said the housekeeper, puzzled that Stein should thus confide in her. ‘Don’t forget that your telephone is still switched over to the answering machine.’