room. At that moment, Basher came out and I saw his eyes flash between Billy and me, and I knew we were both in trouble.
“You come for your job, boy?” Basher said to me. I remember Billy looking startled for a moment as he figured out what was what.
“Detective McGee,” I said, not meeting his eyes.
“Ain’t neither one of you worth shit,” he said, spitting on the clean floor. “One can’t sweep a floor and the other don’t show no respect. You answer my question, boy.”
“I have a job, Detective,” I said. “I work down at Earl’s Gas Station now. Don’t need to push a broom.”
“Well now, Billy, what do you think of that?” Basher said. “Eugene here doesn’t need to push a broom anymore, not like you do, you goddamn shanty Irish.”
“Maybe I’ll steal that job from him too,” Billy said. This threw Basher off his stride. I caught a quick glimpse from Billy and knew what he was up to.
“You could try, but they had a sign in the window. No Irishmen need apply.” I threw it right back at him. Basher, being an Irishman one step above shanty, didn’t have much to say to that, and went sputtering back into the squad room. We thought it was funny, and for a minute I forgot about this kid swiping my job. We went down to Pop’s office and told him about the encounter, but he didn’t think it was funny at all. Said Basher always found a way to get back at you, and never forgot a slight. But we were kids, and thought it was all fun.
I’d come to visit Pop on my way to work at Earl’s most days, and kid around with Billy for a while. Pop said Billy’s old man had gotten the job for him without knowing I’d been in line for it, and since he was a decent sort for a white man, and his kid was a good worker, I should go easy on him. I was a couple of years older than Billy, so naturally he looked up to me. Especially when he found out about my job at the garage. He started dropping by after he was done at headquarters, and we got along okay.
One day I came to the station early to bring Pop his lunch. I took the back stairs, to avoid running into Basher, but that one backfired on me. He and one of his cronies had Billy cornered on a stairwell above me, and were giving him a hard time, pushing him around. I yelled something, I don’t remember what, and they spotted me below. Basher said something about a dirty nigger needing a bath, and kicked Billy’s mop bucket over. I got a good drenching with filthy mop water, but what none of us knew was that the deputy superintendent was not far behind me. He saw everything, and took a good soaking himself.
The look on Basher’s face was priceless. His cigar dropped right out of his mouth, and it stayed open as he tried to yammer out an excuse. But Deputy Superintendent Emmons wasn’t having any of it, and he bawled out Basher and his buddy right in front of us, a dressing-down like I haven’t ever heard again, not even in the army. Of course, Billy and me being kids, we thought it was hilarious. We’re standing behind Emmons with big smirks on our faces, while Basher is saying
“Let’s give tree a chance to eat,” I said as the landlord delivered plates to the table. I couldn’t help smiling at the memory of Basher getting chewed out, even though I knew what had come of it.
“Nice of you to watch out for Tree,” Big Mike said, “since you look up to him and all.” A ripple of laughter went around the table.
“I’d call some parts of his version a slight exaggeration,” I said. “But not the part about Emmons standing there in his wet trousers, yelling at Basher.”
“Remember how his shoes squished, every time he shifted his feet? That only got him madder,” Tree said. We both broke up over that. It felt good.
“What are we eating?” Kaz asked, investigating the food on his plate.
“Looks like there’s chicken and carrots swimming in some kind of sauce,” Big Mike said, shoveling a load onto his fork. “Potatoes and parsnips on the side.”
“Root vegetables aren’t rationed,” Diana said. “They at least are plentiful, especially here in the countryside. It does wear one down, I must say, parsnips day after day.” She moved the food around on her plate, her voice trailing off as the chatter around the table picked up.
“It didn’t go well, did it?” I asked.
“No.” She set her silverware down. “Not at all.”
“The Joint Intelligence Committee?” Kaz asked, in a low voice.
“Yes,” Diana said, her eyes downcast. Big Mike and Tree halted their conversation and looked to me.
“Maybe we should talk about something else,” I said.
“That’s exactly what Roger Allen said.” She clenched and unclenched her hand, and brought her eyes up to look at everyone around the table. “I imagine it is what many in America say about Negroes and the injustices visited upon them. An unpleasant topic brought up by unpleasant people.” She brought her hand to her mouth for a second, and I thought she might burst into tears. But that wasn’t Diana’s style, not the English way at all. When she lowered her hand, her expression was still angry, but controlled.
“Who is this Allen character?” Tree asked.
“A powerful man from the Foreign Office who sits on a powerful committee. A man who sees no reason to be moved by the extermination of Jews throughout Europe,” Diana answered. “He said that the Poles and Jews were deliberately exaggerating reports of atrocities simply to stiffen British resolve.”
“Any chance that might be true?” Tree asked.
“About as true as lynching being an invention of your Negro newspapers,” Diana said, her voice hard. “Even with the eyewitness reports we brought out of Italy, our leaders still refuse to do or say anything.”
“All sounds pretty familiar to me,” Tree said. “Europeans don’t have colored folk, so they go for the Jews instead.”
“Is that an apt comparison?” Kaz asked, perhaps feeling slighted as a European.
“Yes, and I think Tree has a point,” Diana said. “My father told me that the Americans had asked Anthony Eden of the Foreign Office to help get about sixty thousand Jews out of Bulgaria. Their government has yet to turn them over to the Germans, but no one knows how long they can last. I asked Allen about that, and he said they recommended that the British government do nothing.”
“Why?” Kaz asked.
“Because then Hitler might want to negotiate for all the Jews in Europe. ‘And that wouldn’t do at all,’ Allen told me. When I asked why, all he said was, ‘Whatever would we do with them, my dear?’ ”
Diana twisted her napkin, her lower lip quivering. I reached out my hand to take hers, but she pulled away.
“Whatever would we do with them?” she whispered, and left the table.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I have failed, Billy.” Diana curled up against me in bed, twisting her hair between her fingers in a childlike gesture. “And I was a fool to think I wouldn’t.”
“It’s not your fault that the rich and powerful of the world don’t give a hoot about mass murder at a comfortable distance. To them, it’s like reading about a flood or an earthquake half a world away. Terribly unfortunate, but what can one do?” I spoke the last sentence in a snotty Beacon Hill drawl, trying for a laugh. I got a smile.
“No, it isn’t my fault. I know that,” she said, sitting up straight and clutching a pillow to her breast. “What really bothers me is the bravery and sacrifice of those who worked to get the truth out: Poles, Jews, Italians, even Germans. What will they think? Are we worthy of them? And the deaths, Billy. All the people dying in the camps every day, while we do nothing.”
“I feel the same way about Margaret Hibberd and Stuart Neville,” I said, understanding there was no real answer to the question Diana had posed. Some might argue that fighting men were dying every day to end this war, and that was the best we could do for those in the camps. But that wasn’t what she needed to hear right now, or what I necessarily believed. “My dad always said to remember that every murder victim deserved to be
