Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(72)

Come twilight, she turned her steps back to the seawall. Tourists were still riding its Ferris Wheel and roller coaster, and partygoers were headed out on its lengthy pier to the Hollywood Dinner Club, elegant with its crystal chandeliers, massive dance floor, and even air conditioning, the only nightclub with one – and the only nightclub in the nation with a remote radio broadcast.

That evening, the marquee announced Guy Lombardo would be broadcasting his dance music. She stood outside and watched the patrons shoulder past her. She would have been tempted to enter, as well, but she did not even have the cover charge . . . and, too, watching the famous bandleader at the microphone would only remind her of that on which she was turning her back.

Fame and fortune.

After all her years in the limelight, some limelight shadier than others, her spirit yearned for the solace of solitude. Mayhap not solitude, but the sheltering of the soul.

She turned from the pier and traced her steps back to the seawall, where she purchased a chili dog. She gobbled it childlike on the board walk and salivated with each piquant, messy bite.

Reluctantly, toward midnight, she returned to the Oleander Hotel. Pulling the bare bulb’s chain in the center of her room, she watched the roaches scatter. She could only give thinks to whatever gods may be for her reservation on the British ship that sailed on the morrow.

Yet, one roach remained.

Moe’s gargoyle face looked almost cherubic. The clever bastard perched in the corner’s shadows on the room’s single rickety chair. His short legs dangled from its soiled sateen seat. He held up a folded newspaper. “Those reporters, they just won’t leave you alone, will they?”

She did not need to look to know what he was talking about. Obviously, the photo the reporter had snapped earlier that morning at the Cunard White Star office had made the evening newspaper, and Moe had hotfooted it down from Austin.

Her shoulders slumped. It seemed ill luck followed her footsteps. “How did ye find me?”

He grinned. “Well, whores do tend to congregate like birds of a feather.”

Her neck muscles knotted spastically. She wanted nothing more than to smack his self-confident smirk with her purse. She heaved a sigh. “What do ye want this time, Moe?”

“I want to make sure you are not heading back to Germany.”

She gawked. “Are ye crazy? No. Tis for Ireland I am heading.”

“Don’t fuck with me. Your destination is the Rotterdam port of call.”

“Why ever would I go back to Germany?”

Yet, though her roots might be sunk deep in Irish soil, a nagging voice in that wee hour of the morning called her to her ken, to that Germanic blood and soil of her father, blut und boden.

From between the folds of the newspaper, Moe extracted a pistol. “Oh, you won’t go back, I assure you.”

The sound of its firing was muted by the usual nocturnal noises of that Island of Illicit Pleasures.





§ CHAPTER TWENTY §




The B’nai Israel Temple, an ornate white synagogue, was famed throughout Galveston for its imposing Victorian architecture. However, Rabbi Hickman’s office on the third floor was not much larger than a janitor’s closet. The room smelled of carnations.

Receiver in one hand, the Rabbi spoke to one contact after another while he scribbled notes on his desktop calendar pad. “Yes. When? Nothing else? All right. Thank you.” And then he would put through another call.

Duke sat in front of the modest desk. The austere room felt cramped, what with the bookshelves and the desk. He needed more space to stretch out his stovepipe legs. Between them, he held his straw Stetson, his fingers twirling its scruffy brim impatiently.

Next to him, Goldman, one knee draped over the other, puffed agitatedly on a Lucky Strike. Every so often, he would flick an ash into his trouser cuff.

Duke could have used a cheroot – or, better, a whiskey.

At last, the rabbi replaced the receiver, glanced at his notes, and then slowly looked from Duke to Goldman and back to Duke. “Well, neither a Romy Sonnenschein, nor a Romy Sunshine, is on any passenger list – ocean liners or airplanes – bound for the British Isles for the next two weeks.”

He paused, and Duke didn’t like the grim look of Harold’s expression. With gnarled knuckles, the rabbi drummed a riff on his desktop. Then, in a hushed voice, he said, “However, a source reports the county morgue picked up in the red-light district a body of one of our sponsored Jewish refugees.”

Duke’s stomach cratered and his heart stonewalled. With utter desolation, he heard the finality of Harold’s statement and simply stared dry-eyed at his now crushed Stetson. “Is it . . . ” His tongue couldn’t get out her name.

Goldman’s cigarette had dropped onto the hardwood floor. “ . . . Romy?”

Hickman fingered his gray beard. “My source did not know. Let me put in a call to the morgue.”

While the rabbi rang through yet another call, Goldman collected his cigarette to puff relentlessly again, and Duke spun his Stetson, straightening its dented brim with each revolution. Both men were inordinately preoccupied with mundane tasks. But for Duke, this was no mundane moment that seemed to stretch eternally. His heart felt as heavy as an iceberg.

“Wendell, this is Rabbi Hickman. Can you provide the identity of the victim’s body collected at the Oleander this morning?” Once more, while waiting, he tattooed his gnarled knuckles on his desktop. “Umm-hmm. Right.”