'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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
'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
