from New York this morning, we don’t know anybody in Milwaukee, and we were just interested in hearing anything you had to say about Victor.”
“Damn. Who are these friends?”
“The man I mentioned, Tim Underhill, and a friend of ours named Maggie Lah.”
“She over there too?”
“No, she wasn’t. She came along to help us.”
“You say Victor was an important member of your unit? How so?”
“He was a good combat soldier. Victor was very reliable under fire.”
“Jeez, what horseshit,” Spitalny said. “I knew Vic better than you did, mister.”
“Well, that’s exactly why we wanted to talk to you. We do want to know more about him.”
Spitalny hummed to himself for a second. “You told my wife you wasn’t cops.”
“That’s right.”
“You just come out here to see us? In the middle of winter?”
“Last year we had a kind of reunion in Washington. There aren’t many of us left. We were interested in seeing what we could learn about Victor and another guy in our unit from Milwaukee. This is the time we had free.”
“Okay, you just wanta talk about Vic, I guess you could come out. Around five. I gotta get back to work.”
He gave directions to his house, and hung up.
Poole said, “He doesn’t want us there, but he gave in anyhow. He was nervous, and he doesn’t sound like the kind of man who gets rattled easily.”
“Now I think
Poole wandered back to the window. The black car was still stuck in the drift, and its rear wheels spun so hard that smoke lifted up from the road.
“Let’s look for Dengler’s parents,” Underhill said behind him.
Poole heard Underhill stand up and walk across the room to the telephone book. A yellow city bus was making its way up the street. Tired-looking people wrapped in coats and scarves sat like museum exhibits in the lighted windows. For a time the bus waited for the black car to get out of the snowbank. The driver cracked open his window and shouted something. The driver of the black car opened his door, stood on the ledge, and yelled to the bus driver. He was wearing a small tweed cap.
“Only one Dengler,” Underhill said. “On something called Muffin Street.”
The driver hopped out of the black car. The bus ground forward, and the car shuddered another few feet into the snow. The man in the cap was screaming at the bus—he made a rush at it and pounded at its side. His car slid another slanting inch or two into the bank. One of the parking meters began to tilt backwards in the snow. The man in the cap ran to his car, opened the trunk, and took out a tire iron. He whanged the front of the bus, then closed his trunk with the other hand. He went around to the side of the bus and began to slam the tire iron against the silver metal as the bus methodically pushed his car deeper into the snowbank. The head of the parking meter gradually sank out of sight. Then the bus swerved out into the center of the street. Car horns blasted. The man in the tweed cap ran after the bus as it toiled up the icy street, slamming the tire iron against the bus’s rear bumper. Each time he swung he took a little jump to clear the L’eggs advertisement on its back end. He looked like a furious little wind-up toy as he chased after the bus. The passengers in the back seat had turned around and were staring down with round rubbery faces that reminded Poole of the faces of newborn babies.
3
As they turned onto a wide long bridge Poole looked out of the window of their cab, expecting to see a river beneath them. Far beneath in a wide valley, smokestacks pushed out grey clouds like wings that froze and hung in the black air. Small red fires burned and danced at the tops of columns, and red lights shone far down at the heads of trains that clanked slowly forward, showering sparks.
“What’s that called?” Poole asked the cabdriver.
“Nothing.” The driver was an ageless being who smelled like curdled milk and must have weighed three hundred pounds. Tattoos covered the backs of both his hands.
“It doesn’t have a name?”
“We call it the Valley.”
“What’s down there?”
“Local companies. Glax. Dux. Muffinberg. Firms like that. Fluegelhorn Brothers.”
“Instrument makers?” Underhill asked.
“Ditching equipment, garbage bags, stuff like that.”
The Valley’s resemblance to a surrealist hell increased as they progressed over the bridge. The frozen grey wings mutated to slabs of stone, the flames became more numerous. Sudden spasmodic illuminations revealed, as if by lightning bolt, crooked streets, stalled trains, long factories with broken and boarded windows. What seemed like half a mile down a tiny red sign winked MARGE ‘N’ AL’S … MARGE ‘N’ AL’S.
“There are bars down there?”
“There’s everything down there.”
“Do people live in the Valley? Are there houses down there too?”
“Look,” the driver said. “You’re an asshole, that’s okay with me. If you don’t like it, you can get outa this cab. All right? I don’t need your shit.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Just shut up and I’ll take you where you wanna go. Okay with you?”
“Okay with me,” Poole said. “Sure. You bet.”
Maggie put her hands over her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking.
“Driver, is there a bar called The House of Correction in this town?” Underhill asked.
“I hearda that one,” the driver said.
The cab hit a patch of ice at the end of the bridge, skidded nearly halfway around, then straightened out again. The smell of chocolate momentarily filled the cab.
“What’s that from?” Underhill asked. “The smell.”
“Chocolate factory.”
Now they drove endlessly on streets both broad and narrow bordered by two-story houses with tiny porches. Every block had its own bar named something like Pete ‘N’ Bill’s and covered with the same peeling brickface or asphalt siding as the little houses. Some blocks had two bars, one on each corner. Tall chain fences blocked off vacant lots heaped with snow that looked blue and cancerous beneath the streetlamps. Every now and then a beer sign burned in the window of what otherwise looked like a private house. On the brightly lighted corner before SAM ‘N’ ANNIE’S GOOD TIMES LOUNGE, a fat man in a wolfskin parka was braced before a big black dog. The cab stopped at the traffic light. The man struck the dog with his left hand, slapping it hard enough to rock it to its side. Then he struck it with his right hand. Poole could see the man grinning, showing his teeth inside the parka. He hit the dog again, and the animal backed up, crinkling its lip away from its long teeth. Again the man smashed his hand against the dog’s head. This time the dog slipped, and skittered on the ice pavement before it got its footing again. The dog lowered its shoulders and inched backward. Poole was staring at the man and the dog—the man owned the dog, this was how he played with it. The light changed, and the cab moved ahead through the empty intersection just as the dog charged. Both Poole and Underhill craned their necks to look through the rear window. All they could see was the man’s pale furry back, broad as a tractor, jerking from side to side as he and the dog engaged.
Ten minutes later the cab pulled up before one of the two-story frame houses. The numbers 6 8 3 5 had been nailed to the top of the porch. Poole opened the door and began paying the driver. The air instantly burned his cheeks, his forehead, his nose. His fingers had turned clumsy in the cold. “Were you in Vietnam?” he asked. “I saw the Airborne insignia on your hands.”
The driver shook his head. “I’m only twenty years old, pop.”
They hurried up the icy concrete walk. The steps sagged, and the porch tilted to the right. Over the original
