The Devil May Dance by Jake Tapper (books to read fiction txt) 📗

father in bed, listening to serials on the radio Charlie had built by hand in Cub Scouts. They’d started with comedies like Sam ’n’ Henry and The Goldbergs and moved on to dramas: Aunt Jymmie and Her Tots in Tottyville. Eventually they’d graduated to Westerns, do-gooder tales, mysteries, and true-crime: Empire Builders, The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen, The Adventures of Ellery Queen, The Bishop and the Gargoyle. When a show ended, Charlie would turn off the radio and he and his dad would talk about the plot, the twists, the actors whose voices they’d come to recognize. They were a team, a pair of aficionados, critiquing the sound effects, raising their fingers when a common trope was leaned upon too heavily. Those were some of Charlie’s happiest memories.

Occasionally, on the nights when he smelled as if he’d been pickled in gin, Winston could get a bit silly. The popularity of radio serials exploded in the 1930s, and demand apparently exceeded the supply of new ideas and good writing; Charlie had noted the frequency with which some freshly wounded victim would spit out his last utterance with the only fight left in him, economizing the words so that “The murderer’s name is” would exhaust all remaining oxygen, leaving the identity of the killer a mystery unless the victim was able to point to some object that at first glance made no sense. Charlie would pretend to take one in the gut and then gasp, muttering, evoking laughter from his father. When Winston was sufficiently in his cups, the two would act it out together, collapsing on each other’s chests with the ridiculous last words: “The…murderer’s…name…is…”

Winston’s current state recalled that theatrical shortness of breath; Charlie couldn’t help but smile despite it all. Winston saw him smiling and reached out to touch his cheek.

“Pa,” Winston exhaled.

“Pa?” Charlie asked.

“Calais,” he added, then started hacking again. He held up his right index finger, then used it to reach out and touch Charlie’s nose. The cough then seized him and pulled him back, his body convulsing. Charlie looked at Margaret, now in tears. Warden Denno returned alone, no doctor in sight, and stood by uselessly. As Winston coughed violently, two orderlies ran to his bed and sedated him. It reminded Charlie of a time in France when his men were choking on nerve gas left over from the previous war. He desperately needed a drink.

Escorting Charlie and Margaret from the infirmary to the front gate, the warden asked if they had any idea what Winston was talking about. If it was something that would be helpful to the doctor, Denno said, he could pass it along.

“No clue,” said Charlie. “Though it’s good to hear that somewhere in this complex, there’s an actual physician.”

Embarrassed, Denno grimaced. “He’s usually here by now; he’s just late today.” He cleared his throat, filling the awkward silence with something, anything. “Did he say Pa? Did you call him Pa?”

“Thanks for your time today,” Charlie said, ignoring his question. They reached the front gate, and he shook the warden’s hand with all the politeness he could muster, balancing his disgust with his father’s predicament against the fact that the warden could make it much worse. “Really appreciate your help, Warden.”

Once they were on the highway, Margaret answered Denno’s question. “Pas-de-Calais,” she said.

“That’s my guess too,” Charlie said. He had a flask hidden somewhere. He needed to get at it. Without Margaret seeing.

“What does a northern French state have to do with anything?” she asked.

Charlie frowned and looked in the rearview mirror for police. His foot pressed harder on the gas pedal. Margaret was familiar with this particular brand of silence. This was when he felt he had information he couldn’t share. To Margaret, it was an aggressive silence, almost showing off.

“We are well past keeping secrets here, Charles,” she said.

He sighed; she was right.

“It was called Operation Fortitude,” he said. “Most people still don’t know about it. I didn’t even know about it at the time—I only learned about it on House Oversight.” He looked at her.

“Go on,” she said. “Keep your eyes on the road and keep talking.”

“So part of Fortitude took place in Pas-de-Calais, with the First Army Group,” he continued. He stole a look at her, then wondered if there was a rest stop where he could sneak a drink.

“First Army Group?” she said. “Never heard of them. And I read everything when you were over there.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Charlie said.

“Which was?”

“It didn’t exist,” Charlie said. “Deception campaign. Army even built these things they called Bigbobs. Fake landing craft. Inflatable. Dummy tanks.”

“Holy smokes, I can’t believe I haven’t heard about this.”

“It’s one of the most amazing stories of the war,” Charlie agreed.

“So was your dad holding up one finger to signify the First Army Group?” she asked.

“Oh, I hadn’t thought that,” he said. “Maybe. I thought it was something else. Huh. You may be right.”

“How did your dad even know about it? You confided in him?”

“Believe it or not, he told me,” Charlie said. He pointed to an exit. “I’m going to get some gas,” he said.

“He did?” she asked.

“Yeah, one night, maybe ten years ago? It was late, we were in his study drinking scotch. Turns out he knew about it because he helped with the pneumatic-rubber construction. Dad made a lot of money during the war, doing these…odd jobs. For the Allies.”

“And then violated some promise and spilled the beans.”

“We were drinking,” Charlie said.

“Yeah, well,” said Margaret. “People do stupid things when they drink too much.”

Charlie looked at his wife to see if she was speaking about his obvious general problem or alluding more specifically to the Lola incident. Although he still had not told her about it; had Charlotte? She didn’t return the glance. He pulled into a gas station and an attendant ran out.

“Fill ’er up,” Charlie said. He turned back to Margaret, who was powdering her nose. “You want to use the facilities?” he asked her.

“Sure,” she said.

A few minutes later,