just on that coffee and vino.”
Joe sat down and waited to hear about the trouble.
“Hear that music,” said Charley. “That’s old Silvestro making music. Every time it sounds like the espresso machine blowing its top, that’ll be Silvestro singing a shepherd song.”
“Let’s hear it, Chuck.”
“You will,” and Charley sat down. He put his feet on the safe by the wall, a rusty and beat-up thing, but the mechanism inside was new. “That ambush was worse than just losing the merchandise. It—”
“Ya, I know. They fired guns and it scared you.”
“Worse, Lenken. They got a good look at me. They caught me and in the headlights they got a good look at me.”
That’s when Joe sat back and didn’t seem interested any more: “So maybe you’ll get a couple of years,” he said. “Good riddance.”
For the first time Charley raised his voice. It was sharp and he talked fast.
“Not a couple of years, you dumb bastard. The rope! Or worse, you bastard. Maybe life!”
Joe knew what Charley meant but it didn’t faze him.
“You got a fever, Chuck?”
“I got a fever. I got a fever to stay the way I am, stay left alone, stay so your and my uncle don’t know about it.” And then his voice got so quiet Joe could just hear it. “Or maybe you don’t remember, Corporal. You and me are deserters.”
They didn’t say anything for a while because everything was clear. If they got caught for jaywalking and the police had nothing better to do for the moment and started to look at papers, at dates and names on their papers, then pretty soon the whole rotten underpinnings would start to shake. Joe Lenkva, born Iowa, U.S.A., a farm boy with no skill except running potato tillers, good stuff for the infantry, sturdy stuff all the way up through Africa, making corporal in the motor corps because good stuff Lenkva was just the right type of noncom material. They never suspected he had a brain of his own. He always kept his mouth hanging open, which made him look stupid. That’s how cunning he was. He didn’t care how stupid he looked.
So when Lenkva hit Anzio he didn’t run because he was scared. He ran because he figured it was best that way all around. And he made it. He made it from Corporal Lenkva to Joe Lenken, Italy, tavern owner and lover of Fannys.
Or if they caught Charley driving a truck with the wrong kind of merchandise in the back and they should look at his papers a little too long, they would find he’d been Charley all along, but the first time he changed his last name was when he ran away from home. Home wasn’t much good, with too many brothers and sisters and not enough mother and father. So he picked fruit for a while and then the season was over. He washed dishes in Frisco, got a good look at the bums on Mission Street, but that was too much like home so he ran again. He learned being a carpenter where the developments mushroomed in the valley next to Los Angeles and that was all right until they got organized there. He had saved his dough so he ran again. When he walked into the little town at the foot of the Rockies he had another name, just from habit. There wasn’t any building going on there so he started to pump gas for Old Benton, who had the only station for miles around. Just when Charley bought a piece of Old Benton’s garage the draft caught up with him and being a fast liar and the only available male in town, Charley made private in nothing flat. He stayed that way until Anzio and when it came to the point where the platoon was gone, all dead, Charley was still alive. That had been luck.
From there on it wasn’t luck but determination, or at least luck used to his best advantage. Charley ran again. He ran good that time—so good he figured he’d never run again, not change his name again except this one time when he went underground—and watched the advantages. Victory made everybody generous, which was an advantage, and when Charley showed up again he was an American immigrant with an easy way about business, smiling most of the time because that’s how his face was built. If he was worried or if he had eyes in the back of his head, it didn’t show. Charley didn’t drink in the afternoon and he didn’t have a nervous smoking habit. All he did was eat aspirin, and few people knew about that.
Chapter Three
CHARLEY STOPPED RATTLING the aspirin box.
“If they look too hard we got a problem,” he said.
“So run,” said Joe.
It caught Charley by surprise, as if Joe was showing him the door but didn’t think he was going to use it himself.
“So run,” Joe said again.
Charley got up. When it stung him where the bandage was he hardly noticed.
“Run! I’m through running, you bastard! I’m sticking where I am because I like standing still for once, and I’m not doing you any favors and lam out of here pulling the chase after me. If they get me, Joe, they get you!”
“Not me, Chuck. With me everything’s legit.”
Charley sat down. He was grinning.
“Do tell. Like what, Joey? You going to marry little Fanny?” but Charley saw how the joke wasn’t making any dent. When Joe folded his arms he suddenly looked even bigger than he was.
“It’s like this, Chuck. They’re not looking for me, and if they were they couldn’t prove a thing. I been running the osteria and minding my own business at home. Right, Chuck?”
Charley nodded, kept listening.
“And if they get you, Chuck, you wouldn’t drag me into it, would you, Chuck?”
“Don’t get cute.”
“So there’s nobody after me in this country. I got Italian papers good as gold. Citizenship, Chuck. You didn’t know that, did you, Chuck?”
Charley hadn’t known that.
“Perhaps I look stupid, Chuck—”
“You do.”
“—but I’m not.”
“No, you’re not.”
“And I’ll show you why. That Corporal Lenkva you keep talking about, let’s say Uncle Sam is still looking for him. If they find him that means extradition. I can fight extradition, Chuck, because the Italians would have to arrest me—except they don’t arrest peaceful citizens that got no record and just run a tavern up in the outskirts. And here’s the payoff, Chuck. Uncle Sam’s not looking for me.”
“Oh no. They just want you to have a good time with Fanny and not bother about a little thing like a general court martial for desertion.”
Joe laughed and the sound bounced around for a while without going up or down.
“That’s the truth, Chuck. Remember that G.I. insurance? Well, it’s been seven years and more, so if somebody wants to collect they can make a request after seven years. The court declares me dead and they collect the money. That’s what my mother did. She went and had me declared dead and collected the ten thousand. So now it’s even legit for Uncle
