“I think you’re half right,” I said.
“Don’t you ever admit you’re wrong?”
“Why bother?”
“Well, just remember one thing.”
“What’s that?”
He gave me a farewell smile.
“I told you so,” Thomas Brodie Culhane said.
CHAPTER 42
I drove back to the house, made a big fuss over Rosie, and gave him two cans of dog food and an extra bone. I kept my arm out of the shower so the bandage wouldn’t get wet, then dressed in my best navy slacks and blue shirt. I stopped by the drugstore and picked up the most expensive bottle of champagne they had, and went next door to the toy store to get a tin bucket, the kind kids take to the beach. There was a little girl, no more than eight or nine, selling roses on the corner. Ten cents apiece. She had sixteen left. I bought them all and gave her five bucks. I thought she was going to cry.
It was getting dusk when I turned into Millie’s drive.
She opened the door before I got to it.
“Hi,” I said, “I happened to be in the neighbor…”
She didn’t let me finish. She pulled me in the house and put the roses and the pail with the champagne on a table near the door and she kissed my cheeks and my lips, and then took the pail and led me up the stairs and into her bathroom. She turned on the faucets to the tub and poured in a bottle of bubble bath. She unbuttoned my shirt slowly, kissing my chest as she did. She unzipped my pants and pulled them down, and sat me down on the edge of the tub and took off my shoes and socks. Then she slowly unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall on the floor, and slipped off her tennis shorts and panties. She stuck a toe in the water, eased herself down into the bubbles, then took my hands and led me into the tub facing her.
Then she noticed the bandage.
“My God, what happened?” she said with alarm.
“Later,” I said. “How about the champagne?”
“Later,” she murmured.
I settled into the tub and she slipped her legs around my hips and took my arm and gently kissed the wound.
“How bad is it?” she asked softly.
“Well,” I whispered, “I think it may have ruined my dreams of becoming a concert pianist.”
She locked her legs around me and slid me to her.
“Thank God,” she whispered in my ear. “I hate Chopin.”
EPILOGUE
1946
Bannon got a card from Brodie Culhane once while he was overseas. Christmas, 1944. He was in some little town in Normandy. He didn’t remember its name. There wasn’t enough left to remember.
“I know how it is at Christmas,” Brodie had written. “I’ll think of you and hoist a glass of Irish Mist. One cube, please. Take care of yourself, Cowboy.” It was signed “Santa C.”
It had reached Bannon on January third, but it was the thought that counted.
Not a word since, except the card he had received two days ago. And now he was driving down the hill into San Pietro as he had five years before. Nothing had changed except the trees were a little taller and there was a different movie playing at the theater and Max and Lenny weren’t riding herd on him.
He had said very little on the drive up, and the night before he had sat out by the pool, soaking his leg and rereading the file he had kept through the years. It was in a footlocker he had left with her when he went off to the army. He hadn’t paid any attention to the old locker until he got the card, when they got back from their honeymoon.
He read it, showed it to her, then went down in the storm cellar, opened the trunk, and dug it out.
A closed case to everyone but you, Zee, Millicent had thought.
She didn’t ask him about it and they had talked little about the old file on the trip up, but she knew that there were questions in its yellowing pages that had gnawed at him since he had come back from San Pietro that last time. She had sat quietly with her hand on his leg, watching the foothills grow into mountains.
He was going to find the answers.
He took a left at the bottom of the hill, drove up to The Breakers, and parked in front of the entrance.
The valet was a sharp little noodle in a tailored uniform, hair slicked back and a solicitous smile on his face. The closer he got to the car, the more the smile changed from con man to awe. He stopped beside the car and ran the flat of his hand very lightly across the hood.
“Fine,” he said. “Italian paint job.”
He backed up about six feet, checked her out, and came back.
“Twelve cylinders. Speedometer top: one-sixty.”
“Close. One-eighty,” Bannon said.
“British leather and I’ll bet she’s got a Sternberg radio in the dash.”
“Muellenberg.”
He whistled low with great appreciation.
“You think you could find a place to park this baby so she don’t get dinged up or get a door scratched?” Bannon said as he struggled out of the driver’s seat. The kid walked over to help him and he handed the youngster his cane.
“I can handle it,” Zeke said. “Hold on to this for me.” He got out and took the cane, then the kid ran around to the other side of the car and opened the door for Millie. She was stunning as always, dressed in pastel colors: a pale blue skirt and a pink blouse, and she was wearing a yellow straw hat, its brim flopping down around her ears, with her silken hair sweeping over her shoulders. The kid was dazzled. He forgot the car for a minute as he helped her down to the running board and onto the walk. Then he bowed from the waist.
“Thank you,” she said, and flashed him a million-dollar smile. Bannon handed him a five-dollar bill but the kid shook his head.
“No, sir,” he said, looking at the two rows of ribbons on Bannon’s khaki shirt. “I ought to be paying you for the privilege of driving it across the street.”
Then he ran around the front of the car, climbed aboard, and ran his hands lovingly around the oak steering wheel.
They entered the lobby, where Brett Merrill was sitting across the way. He stood up, loped across the room, and shook Bannon’s hand hard enough to loosen a tooth.
“Good to see you, Zeke,” he said with a smile that lit up the soft light of the lobby. “How’s the leg?”
“It’s fine,” Bannon said. “I carry the cane to keep my balance. Millicent, this is Brett Merrill.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Bannon,” he said with courtly grace, and brushed the back of her hand with his lips. “What a delight to meet you.”
As always, a Southern gentleman to the core.
“Let’s have a drink,” Merrill said.
They sat down in the barroom, which was an elegant recessed alcove off the main lobby. Nothing seemed to have changed in the hotel since Bannon had last seen it.
Merrill said to the waiter, “I know what the gentleman will have, unless his taste has changed. Irish Mist,
