D+100

 

 

 

 

September 14

 

 

Ben woke before sunup.

 

His fifteen stitches itched but did not ache. His bandage did not seep. By the light of a lantern at the end of the ward he put on the fresh uniform that had been brought for him and laid across a chair at the foot of his bed. The fit was fine; the nurse who’d fetched it for him had said her husband was exactly his size. She had transferred all his rank and chaplain’s insignia to the new outfit. He did not remove any of the markings, they would have use yet. He pulled Phineas’s Colt from the bedside table and checked the clip for the four rounds. They were there. He stuffed the pistol into his waistband. From a medical can he gathered a clean bandage, tape, and a roll of gauze and dropped them in his new pack. He slipped on crisp socks but carried his boots, which had been cleaned. His Red Cross helmet remained the same filthy thing he’d worn into the hospital.

 

He tiptoed out of his ward, avoiding the night nurse. When he was in another hallway, he put on the boots and walked for the front door. Anyone noticing him saw a chaplain leaving the hospital and had no reason to stop him.

 

Ben flagged a ride. Traffic ran thick in Fontainebleau even in the early morning. The city on the Seine was a major crossroads and a depot for Third Army. It held several headquarters and was on the return route of the Red Ball Express. Bonaparte’s last palace was here, too. When Napoleon departed Fontainebleau in 1814 he went into exile.

 

Ben rode east to the sprawling depot near the river. He thanked the driver, who was headed for breakfast and a cot, then walked to the motor pool. Before he’d gone fifty feet into the depot he found himself pressing against walls of crates and sliding sideways along lines of parked vehicles to avoid the crush of activity. Trucks roared in and out of the depot in immense echelons. The pace of exchange was feverish. Empty was traded for full, loads were lifted and shifted by hand or crane, engines and shouts rang as loud and urgent as a battleground. After a week in a hospital bed, Ben’s strength still wavered. Several times men, white and colored both, yelled at him to look out, he had wandered straight into their paths. Ben winced at truck horns and at the clout of loads dropped, unable to separate the clash of battlefields from this depot.

 

With dawn rising, needing a chair and water, he found a motor-pool garage. A sergeant behind a desk directed Ben elsewhere. Ben walked off, but the sergeant came to haul him back. The man gave up his seat, set out a canteen, and told Ben to wait right there. Ten minutes later, with dawn filtering through grimy windows, the sergeant rolled a newly painted jeep in front of his desk, headlamps on. He honked the horn, happy with his good deed for a chaplain. Ben jerked, he’d been dozing and almost dove from the chair. The sergeant said, ‘You okay?’ Ben calmed himself, it was just a jeep. He asked to keep the canteen and was given it. He tossed in his pack and drove off for Paris.

 

~ * ~

 

Ben had never been in Paris. But once he found Montparnasse, Rue Stanislas was not difficult to find. It was a two-block stretch linking two major avenues, just three hundred yards from the Luxembourg Gardens. A series of Parisians directed him ever closer with hand signs or passing English. The street was a narrow canyon of high, ornate facades with storefronts and garage doors at the bottoms and balconied flats farther up. When he arrived the mid-morning sun had just climbed the tops of the buildings and cast sharp shadows down the cobblestones.

 

Ben parked in a shadow, the only vehicle on the cobbles. On the sidewalks, old women lugged fresh loaves and mesh bags of victuals. They wore kerchiefs and coats. Ben looked at their fat ankles. He finished the last of the canteen. The ride in the open and stiff-riding jeep had exhausted him.

 

He waited, gazing the length of Rue Stanislas. He unbuttoned his tunic, pulled up his OD undershirt, and glanced at his midriff. The wrapping was clean, the ride from Fontainebleau had not ripped his stitches. He tucked himself neat again.

 

Ben was reluctant to get out of the jeep. This street held secrets he did not want to know. If he had a bullhorn he would stay put and call out for Thomas. This is your father. I’ve come for you. Come out, come out.... The boy would step from a shadow of Rue Stanislas into the light, climb into the empty seat, and they would drive away. Ben would need to know nothing of what Thomas had done, why he was here, why he was White Dog and not Thomas Kahn. They could unravel it later, when they were safe, when Ben was strong and they were together.

 

Ben tasted hope. He knew the best he could expect was that he would take Thomas back to a court-martial and prison as a deserter. No matter. The boy was young yet, he had hurt no one. He was in the black market. Ben had done far worse in his youth in the name of duty than what Thomas might have done for money. There was time to heal Thomas, too. Ben forgave his son for being alive the way he’d had to forgive him for being dead. Ben Tapped the letter in his breast pocket, the nurse had been careful to put it there.

 

An elder gentleman in a bowler hat approached. Ben raised a hand in greeting. The man smiled in return.

 

‘Pardonnez-moi.’

 

‘Oui?’

 

‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak French. But do you know a man who calls himself White Dog?’

 

The man cocked his head.

 

‘Chien Blanc?’

 

‘Yes. Oui.’

 

The man waggled a wrinkled finger.

 

‘Non,’ the old man said, ‘non.’ He walked off, shaking his head.

 

Ben stood beside the jeep. He asked two younger women walking together. They spoke English and greeted him. One welcomed him to Paris and kissed him on a cheek before he could ask about Chien Blanc. They looked at each other and said they did not know him. An older woman followed. She lifted her cane to make her point. ‘Non!’

 

Ben waited and selected a middle-aged man in dirty coveralls. He had a bulbous belly. This told Ben he had eaten during the Occupation. He might know White Dog the black marketeer.

 

‘Chien Blanc?’ The man stopped and scratched his chin. He wore two rings on that hand. ‘Why do you want him?’

 

‘I want to sell him this jeep.’

 

‘But you are a rabbi, yes? You do not do this.’

 

‘This is a disguise. I have been shot. Look.’

 

Ben opened a few buttons to show his gauze wrap. He lifted the hem of his coat to display the butt of the .45.

 

‘I know Chien Blanc,’ Ben insisted. ‘He said to meet him here on Rue Stanislas but I do not know which building.’

 

The man nodded, impressed. ‘A rabbi. That is clever.’

 

‘No one suspects.’

 

‘Give me something,’ the man said.

 

‘I have nothing.’

 

‘The gun.’

 

‘No.’

 

‘The pack.’

 

‘Take it.’

 

The man hefted the bag and peered inside. He dumped the gauze and bandage on the floorboard.

 

‘Keep those, Rabbi. Number three ten, if he is there.’

 

‘Merci.’

 

‘Monsieur, I would not take the pistol.’

 

‘Why not?’

 

‘Chien Blanc, he has been good to the people of Montparnasse. He has kept many from starving. Yes? He was on the barricades. Many think him a hero. But I know him, too.’

 

The man used the bejeweled hand to pull back the hair above an ear. He tilted his head to show Ben a new scar.

 

‘He gave me this.’

 

‘What are you saying?’

 

‘I am saying if you find you need that pistol, you will also find it is not enough.’

 

The man shouldered the backpack.

 

‘Please do not tell Chien Blanc you spoke with me.’

 

‘I won’t.’

 

‘I hope you sell for a good price. Bonne chance, Rabbi.’

 

~ * ~

 

White Dog shot his cuffs and straightened his tie. He laid out a hand and watched the green dollars pile up. He always made Hugo pay him in American money. One, two, three thousand bucks, all in hundreds. He held up his other hand for Hugo to stop while he folded these bills and slipped them into his coat. Then he put the hand out again for Hugo to fill it with three thousand more.

 

He stowed this wad in his baggy pants and withdrew the key to the deuce-and-a-half. White Dog made the biggest profit here, selling the trucks to the Voltaire gang for two thousand when he only paid one for them. He angled the key over his head for Hugo like a doggie treat, making the mobster reach up for it. Hugo took the key with no expression. Both men turned to the alley to watch the last of the jerricans handed down from the Jimmy’s bed. A line of twenty cars hunkered on the shaded cobbles. Each driver took ten containers and covered them with blankets in their trunks and backseats. Two big guards in leather jackets blocked the entrances to the alley.

 

‘Let’s go inside,’ White Dog said, laying a hand to Hugo’s back. ‘Talk a little more business.’

 

Hugo followed White Dog to the back door of the garage. Four other gangsters who had been unloading the Jimmy clapped their hands, finished with the labor, and fell behind them. The column of cars and the truck pulled out of the alley like a funeral. The two behemoth guards got in cars. Before White Dog entered the garage door, the alley was empty. All that remained were the two rolls in his pockets and the five ugly men he held the door open for.

 

Inside, White Dog moved carefully not to brush anything on his white coat. Everything was dusty, the walls held tools unused for years. The ceiling rose high, slung with chains like a dungeon. Hugo and his henchmen took up a semicircle. One of them sat on the fender of a forgotten Citroen, careless about getting his pants dirty.

 

‘Bon,’ said White Dog, rubbing his palms. He switched to English, for him and Hugo alone. ‘Okay, we’ve made a lot of money in the last three weeks. Right?’

 

Hugo took in the surroundings. His jowls tightened, showing how little he liked coming into the garage. Hugo was not the night creature White Dog had become, he did not have the same tolerance for grit and dark. Hugo was about power and its many bright rewards. White Dog was driven only by greed, and that was why he considered himself the stronger man.

 

‘Yes,’ the mobster answered. He raised his eyes from the oil-stained concrete.

 

‘I’ve lost track. What, a dozen truckloads so far?’

 

‘Perhaps. Quite a few, Chien Blanc.’

 

White Dog grinned. He had bad news.

 

‘This first part has been easy, getting up and running. I’m hooked in with a couple of GIs I can rely on. No problems there. But, here’s the kick in the pants. They’re telling me it’s getting tougher on them to come up with whole truckloads of gas. COM Z is starting to crack down. So much gas is disappearing into Paris that even fucking Patton is stealing it. So.’

 

Hugo waited. ‘So?’

 

‘So, it’s getting more risky for them.’ White Dog folded fingertips into his own chest. ‘So, it’s getting more expensive for me. Hey, this was bound to happen. Now I got to raise my prices. You gotta see that, right?’

 

Hugo rubbed his forehead. ‘How much?’

 

‘Four-fifty a gallon. Hugo, just hand it off downstream. Sell it for five-fifty. What’s the big deal?’

 

‘I will have to speak with Voltaire about this.’

 

‘Okay, you square it with him. Tell you what. I’ll hold the line on the trucks. Still an even two grand, no price jack there. That’s all I can do.’

 

Hugo turned to his four men. In French he told them, ‘Chien Blanc wants to raise his prices.’ The four shifted and cursed. One of them spat and the dab slapped the concrete.

 

Hugo faced White Dog.

 

The goon resting on the Citroen leaped to his feet. All four of Hugo’s men flashed hands under their jackets. They drew a firing squad of pistols. Hugo, more slowly, pulled a revolver from his hip. Stunned at the weapons, White Dog backed into a workbench, knocking it over. Wrenches spilled on the floor in a tinny clamor. White Dog focused and noted the five guns were not pointed at him but past his head, behind him.

 

Someone else was in the room. White Dog grew furious as he turned.

 

A soldier stood there, a medic with a Red Cross emblem on his helmet. He was too old to be a medic. He looked familiar, which was impossible.

 

White Dog checked the back of his white coat. The bench he’d bumped had imprinted a stripe of grease across the vent.

 

‘Monsieur,’ Hugo said, dead calm, ‘you are in the wrong place. I suggest you go out the way you came in, right now.’

 

The medic held his ground. One gun cocked.

 

Not a medic. A chaplain. A rabbi.

 

No fucking way, thought White Dog.

 

‘I’m looking for White Dog,’ the rabbi said.

 

Hugo answered. ‘What is your business with him?’

 

‘I will discuss that with him.’

 

‘Who are you, monsieur?’

 

‘Ben Kahn.’

 

White Dog coughed a laugh, shocked. ‘You’re his old man.’

 

Without moving his revolver from the rabbi, Hugo turned to White Dog. In French he asked, ‘You know this man?’

 

‘Yeah,’ White Dog answered in English, to include Ben Kahn. ‘Yeah, I do. That’s Acier’s father.’

 

The rabbi reacted to this. He stepped closer in the room, pulled into the guns aimed at him.

 

‘You’re White Dog?’

 

‘One and only.’

 

‘You know my son?’

 

‘I knew him.’

 

The man stopped advancing. He tightened his lips, his hands worked.

 

‘Knew him?’

 

‘Yeah. I was his co-pilot. After we got shot down the Resistance brought us to Paris. Tommy got the big idea to stay. So we set up our little operation, which by the way you’re interrupting. So if you don’t mind...’

 

‘Where is he?’

 

‘Gone.’

 

‘Gone where?’

 

‘Honest to Pete, this is not a good time.’

 

Hugo lowered his gun. The four behind him followed suit.

 

‘Tell him,’ Hugo told White Dog.

 

‘Aw, geez, Hugo.’ White Dog flapped his hands against his sides.

 

‘Tell the man what happened to his son.’

 

White Dog was exasperated. This was old news. This rabbi had popped up out of nowhere. White Dog was amazed that he’d found this garage. Now, because one old guy couldn’t let go, a very simple and profitable afternoon was going to turn complicated and sour.

 

‘Tommy got picked up. By the Gestapo.’

 

The rabbi seized as if gut-struck. One hand went to his side like he was holding something in.

 

‘When?’

 

‘You want to know exactly? I’ll tell you exactly. June 12. Nobody’s seen him since. Okay, Rabbi? That what you needed to know?’

 

Hugo asked, ‘He is a rabbi?’

 

Acier’s father’s gaze stayed on the floor. His breathing filled the room. He did not speak.

 

Hugo spun on White Dog.

 

In French, he growled, ‘Acier was a Jew?’

 

‘Sure. Sure, he never mentioned it?’

 

‘He did not. But you knew this?’

 

‘Yeah. I knew. What’s the big deal?’

 

‘Then he is dead.’

 

‘I don’t know, Hugo. I guess he’s in a camp somewhere.’

 

‘Yes. A camp somewhere.’

 

Hugo shook his head.

 

‘Tell the rabbi what you did. Or I will.’

 

‘What? What did I do?’

 

‘Chien Blanc, do not think you are the only one who ever spoke to the Germans. Voltaire was not without friends in the Occupation. Now tell the rabbi, or our dealings are at an end.’

 

‘You’re shitting me. Over this? Come on, Hugo, we’re making money hand over fist -’

 

‘Do you think I am telling a joke?’

 

‘Fine. Whatever.’

 

White Dog smoothed the slicked hair on his temples. He shot his cuffs again and switched back to English.

 

‘Look, Rabbi. It was business. Okay? I might have put a bug in the Gestapo’s ear. That’s all. But they had plenty of reason to pick him up anyway, Jew or not. You know? The black market is illegal, and Acier was a big fish. I mean, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. We all do what we got to do. Tommy did it to others. I did it to him. No big surprise.’

 

White Dog turned toward Hugo. ‘Happy? Can we finish our discussion in private now?’

 

‘You killed my son.’

 

White Dog sighed. Was this not going to end, he wondered? Hugo glared. White Dog turned back to the rabbi.

 

‘You got me all wrong, Pop.’

 

‘Don’t call me Pop.’ The man winced. He reached under his jacket to press a hand to his side. This time when he pulled it away, he looked into it.

 

‘S’matter?’ White Dog asked. ‘You got no stomach for business?’

 

He intended this as a pun. It landed flat, so he kept talking.

 

‘That’s all it ever was. Business. Everybody did it. Get real, Rabbi.’

 

The rabbi staggered. He set a hand to a tabletop to steady himself. When he pulled the hand up, the table bore a crimson smear.

 

The rabbi had been shot. Who shoots a rabbi? This was one determined old buzzard.

 

‘So, Pop. What are we gonna do? I can’t stand here all day chattin’ about old times. You don’t look like you want to, either.’

 

The rabbi did not correct White Dog this time for calling him Pop. White Dog figured Acier’s father was just about finished, bleeding and with five armed mobsters staring at him. Still, he must be some guy, this Rabbi Kahn, to come all this way. Tommy had described him like that—tough, a hard nut, he’d said.

 

Ben Kahn reached again under his olive jacket. He hoisted a big pistol, a Colt .45, out of his waistband.

 

The man was trying to scare him, humiliate him in front of his associates. But the old guy held the gun hard, harsh, like he meant it.

 

‘What are you gonna do, shoot me?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

White Dog pivoted for Hugo. The mobster had not lifted his own pistol.

 

‘I think,’ said Hugo, ‘our business is concluded, Chien Blanc.’

 

The first wash of panic sprayed in White Dog’s stomach. What was going on?

 

Hugo put away his revolver. His henchmen did the same. Hugo flicked a finger at the biggest, the one who had sat on the car. The man came close. White Dog, breathing hard, smelled his cologne. He rifled White Dog’s jacket for the three thousand dollar wad. When he had it, he snapped his fingers and flattened the palm. From his trousers White Dog dug up the other roll. The thug gave the money to Hugo.

 

The mobster pocketed the cash. He sidled next to White Dog and whispered in his ear.

 

‘Mamzer. That is Yiddish, Chien Blanc. It means “bastard.”‘

 

Without another word or glance, Hugo and his men left the garage. White Dog stared into the black socket of the Colt until he heard the door slam.

 

He began to shake.

 

~ * ~

 

The search for Ben’s son ended here.

 

The letter in his breast pocket, which like another heart had beat and bothered him, had carried him, went silent. Ben set his hand over the pocket. The paper inside seemed old, an artifact. The last of its kind.

 

An end had been put to everything.

 

Almost everything.

 

The young man on the other end of the Colt began to quiver. Ben wondered what this coward White Dog saw that convinced him he was about to die. It wasn’t just the pistol pointed at him. Looking over the gun Ben felt exactly, to the breath, the way he’d felt in the Great War, cutting throats, cracking heads, crawling by dark to do those dark acts. A week ago, at Mairy, at the battle of the burning depot, he’d wept to kill while the colored boy had celebrated. Both arrived at their destinies in that foxhole. In front of White Dog stood an abandoned man.

 

Ben fixed the pistol between White Dog’s eyes.

 

The boy stammered, ‘You can’t do that!’

 

Ben’s voice was cool.

 

‘Yes I can.’

 

‘No, no, no, you’re a rabbi. You’re ... you’re a man of God.’

 

Ben answered down the barrel.

 

‘Not anymore.’

 

He did not ask what his son was like, what kind of man was he?

 

The first round Ben fired into White Dog would not bring Thomas back. The second bullet would not return the betrayed millions. The third would not lead God back to him. The fourth missed and went into the wall after White Dog was down and dead.

 

~ * ~

 

 

 

 

 

But Moses said to Elohim, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?’

 

Exodus 11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~ * ~