Oasis of Night (12 page)

Callan offered me a cup of coffee out of a thermos on his desk and I accepted. It was hot and delicious and very welcome. A cold, misting drizzle had come down the night before, borne upon a fog bank the size of Pennsylvania. I'd been told to expect such weather around here, but after the recent spate of hot days and balmy nights, it was a nasty surprise.

“You in the service, Mr. Stoyles?”

“Discharged, Sergeant.”

His dark eyes flickered over me, examined me, and then dismissed me, all in the space of a few seconds. “Discharged?” He said it like the word left a bad taste in his mouth. “Honorably?”

“Yes—for medical reasons.”

He smirked. “Medical reasons? You telling me you are a Section Eight, Mr. Stoyles?”

“No, Sergeant.” I fought back the urge to tell him what he could do with himself. “I'm not insane—at least not as far as the Army is concerned.”

“You cannot know how that comforts me, Mr. Stoyles. You see, I am a very curious man, and when you called me the other day, requesting an interview—what day was it that Mr. Stoyles called, Private Thomas?”

Thomas didn't look up from his typewriter. “Wednesday, Sergeant.”

“When you called on Wednesday, requesting an interview, I took the liberty of looking up your service record.” Callan indicated a folder on his desk. “It says here that you originally enlisted yourself in the British Army way back in 1939, and attempted to transfer to the United States Army shortly thereafter.” He sat back and looked at me, his big hands clasped across his abdomen. “Now why would you do a thing like that?”

I wondered why my private convictions were anybody else's business. “I came here for information, Sergeant. Last time I checked, that didn't involve filling you in on my background.” I stood, prepared to leave. “If I'd known this would turn into a court martial, I would have stayed home.” I started for the door and had my hand on the knob when Callan spoke.

“I apologize, Mr. Stoyles, if I seem unduly forthright.” He took a breath and tugged at his uniform jacket. “Please, sit down. Thomas here will tell you that I am curious about all aspects of the military. Nowadays, with the war going on, that curiosity extends to military personnel past and present.” He gestured at his makeshift office. “Spending my days in here as I do, with only sweet young Thomas for company, I tend to forget the social niceties. I do hope you can forgive me for what must seem like an unnecessary intrusion into your personal affairs. If I were back home right now, I can assure you my dear mother would be only too glad to whale the tar out of me.” His grin was spontaneous and genuine, and it transformed him into a sudden small boy. I realized, too, that he was really good-looking.

“There's a hint of an accent there.” I sat and accepted a second cup of coffee. “What part of the States are you from, Sergeant?”

“That would be Mississippi.” He shifted in his chair. “You're from Philadelphia—a Yankee.”

I laughed. “Yeah, that's right.”

“Philly is a great town, even if it is full of Yankees.” He closed the folder and sat back. “You asked me to give you some information on the project we are building here—isn't that so, Lieutenant Stoyles?”

It had been a while since anybody had called me that. “Please—just Jack is fine by me.”

“Well, just Jack, right now this whole damn place, as you can see, is nothing but a row of big tents. We are in the midst of building ourselves some barracks and getting the place outfitted, but it's slow going. Even with the number of ships that come and go from this place, we've had some trouble getting hold of the building materials we need.”

I told him I was interested in all the contractors who had submitted bids for the project, specifically those contractors involved with the construction of the physical buildings that would make up the site. I understood the tendering process in principal, but I wondered if Callan had received any unusual bids for the construction work.

“Now that you mention it, Jack, there's something that's been going around in my mind since we started this whole barn dance.” He went to the filing cabinet and pulled out a manila folder bulging with papers. “We understood from the beginning that this here island has been through some rough economic times, and they've had just about as much trouble with their various governments as ever a people ought to have.” He flipped through the folder until he came to a sheaf of pale blue paper, the type used to print forms. “This here is the totality of bids on all the various aspects of this project. Why don't you go on and take a look at that, tell me what you see.”

There was a flush of sudden recognition as I paged through the documents. Without exception every single bid was from Fayre Construction. In almost every case, for just about every job, Fayre Construction was the only bidder. Despite Octavian's insistence that his company had placed numerous bids, no other tenders had even been submitted, which meant Octavian had probably been warned off. I mentioned this to Callan, certain he'd already noticed it.

“Oh yeah.” He grinned. “That's not all, Mr. Stoyles.” He reached across and flipped through the pages until he came to a carbon copy of a typed page: an engineer's report on the building site. “We allow our contractors to subcontract engineering services as they see fit. It saves us the trouble of having to weed through the local applicants. We figure that a construction company that's been doing business here in the city will know who the best engineers are, anyway. That was how we hired Mr. Cartwright.”

I flashed on Jonah Octavian's conversation with me, that day in his car.
Ken Cartwright submitted a report to the United States Army, stipulating certain site conditions. The report never reached its destination.
“This report is signed by Ken Cartwright.”

“Yeah. Whether he wrote it or not is open to debate.” Callan lit a cigarette. “Mr. Cartwright's report states outright that this building site is free of any abnormalities that might cause a structural compromise. Do you know what happened when we started to build here, Mr. Stoyles?” I confessed I didn't. “Some workers began excavating an area on the north side of the site in preparation for the erection of a barracks. Mr. Cartwright's report stated that the soil in the area lay upon good, solid bedrock—mostly granite, some shale. Recent heavy rains had destabilized the ground, which wasn't granite or shale or anything like it—I swear to God, Mr. Stoyles, it must be the one place on this whole goddamn island that isn't solid rock—and the trench collapsed, killing three men.”

I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. “Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

It was more than an engineer's professional reputation was worth to make a mistake like that, and I said as much to Callan.

“That's just it, Mr. Stoyles. An engineer wouldn't make that sort of mistake. Hell, my old grandpa could go up there with nothing but a pointy stick and know there wasn't no rock underneath that soil!” He closed the folder and slapped it with the palm of his hand. “There's no way Mr. Cartwright wrote that report. His name's on it, but you and I both know it's not hard to forge a signature, especially if it's one that you're familiar with—if it's a signature that you see every day of your life and could probably copy in your sleep. Do you see what I am driving at, Mr. Stoyles?”

There was a long silence in the trailer, save for Thomas's typewriter. “Julie Fayre.” I knew why Octavian had given me the manila envelope that day, containing Julie Fayre's employee identification card, among other things.

“Got herself a job working for Ken Cartwright, typing his reports and letters and things.” Callan took a drag off his cigarette and crushed it in the ashtray at his elbow.

“Do you think she altered the report? Submitted one of her own in its place—a report that said there were no problems with the site?”

“That is exactly what I think, Mr. Stoyles—and I believe it is what you think as well.”

It explained a lot: Julie's odd behavior, the check made out to Chris. “Where's the original?”

Callan leaned back in his chair. “I am not a policeman, Mr. Stoyles, and I certainly am not a private investigator, no sir, but I am willing to bet a week's pay that young Miss Fayre still has the original report and has either destroyed it or hidden it somewhere she thinks it will never be found.”

Like the basement of the Heartache Cafe.

I thanked Callan and said my good-byes to him and Private Thomas. He'd given me a lot to think about, and I wanted some time to mull it over. I walked from Fort Pepperrell along the wide street simply called the Boulevard, which ran along the shores of Quidi Vidi Lake. It wasn't a lake as such—more like a large pond—but it was pretty, with its wide expanse of calm, blue water and the wildflowers and tall reeds that grew along its banks. I was glad I'd had a conversation with Sergeant Callan, but his probing questions about my past had made me very nervous. I'd come here to get away from that part of my life, from the sense of shame I felt at something that wasn't my fault, which I could neither control nor subdue, but which under military rules and discipline might as well have been painted on my forehead.

Do you understand the term “blue ticket,” Lieutenant Stoyles?

Yes, sir.

Do you understand why you are getting one?

Yes, sir, I do.

Then get your pansy ass out of my office.

Maybe that was why I'd taken up with Judy in the first place, to prove something to myself—to prove I was a man in the commonly accepted sense, that I could perform with a woman, that I could be “normal,” that I would no longer want the kinds of things I'd wanted all my life. But it all went south and I was left with nothing: no career, no job, no way to avail of any of the benefits so readily available to veterans whose discharge—unlike my own—was free of taint or suspicion. I told myself I'd come here to escape the things I felt after Judy died, but that wasn't the whole truth. I'd come here because it was as far away as I could get from everything.

 

 

J
ULIE
F
AYRE
lived in one of the more venerable parts of the city, an area known simply as Georgestown, home to ponderous Victorian mansions built by the sorts of men whose fortunes rose and fell according to the mating habits of the northern codfish. I found Julie's place on Maxse Street, a narrow lane populated with wooden-framed houses; she lived in a large white house on the corner of Maxse and Monkstown Road. I didn't expect to find her at home, so I was surprised when she answered my knock—wearing a housecoat and not much else. “Well, hello, Jack! What brings you here?”

“I have some questions I want to ask you. Mind if I come in?”

“Well, I was just—”

I pushed past her into the house. An open suitcase sat on the sofa in the living room, and two smaller cases were stacked in the hallway near the front door. “You going someplace, Julie?”

“I thought I'd take a little vacation, perhaps go out to Gander for a few days. You know, my family has relatives out that way.” She stroked the neckline of her housecoat, probably hoping to draw my gaze, but I ignored her. “Now that you're here, why don't you make yourself comfortable? I can fix us a couple of drinks.” She turned to go into the kitchen, and I followed her.

“Where's the original report, Julie?”

“What?” She reached into the cupboard and took down a couple of highball glasses. There was some business with the liquor cabinet and more fiddling in the icebox. “What are you talking about, Jack?”

“The engineering report on Fort Pepperrell, the one you typed for Ken Cartwright, when you worked for him. What'd you do with it?”

She passed me my drink and raised her glass to me. “To the most handsome man in town.”

“Stop avoiding the question.” I thought about it for maybe half a second—then took a healthy slug of whiskey, and another. Predictably, it was good quality, and probably very expensive, but I didn't think a little thing like money would bother someone like Julie. “What'd you do with the report? Did you burn it? Tear it up?” The taste was mellow, smooth, and smoky, with a faintly bitter tang—just the kind of whiskey I'd expect in a place like this. I drank the rest of it off and set the glass down on the countertop. It was a measure of my agitation that I'd downed that drink without even the slightest hesitation—well, they say you're never really cured, and I guess that was true.

“I haven't the faintest clue what you're talking about.” She laid her hand against her hip, and something in the pocket of her robe crackled.

I lunged forward, but she was too quick for me. She darted out of the kitchen and down the hall, and she was nearly at the front door when I finally caught up with her. I slammed her back against the wall and held her there while I delved into her pocket and came out with a long white envelope, addressed
poste restante
to a mail bureau in Athens.

“Thought you said you were going to Gander.” There was a pain starting behind my eyes and I suddenly didn't feel too good. It had been ages since I'd eaten breakfast, and maybe that was it. “This says Greece. Jonah Octavian's Greek—from Athens.”