Read Then We Take Berlin for Free Online Page B

money.”
    “So far you haven’t mentioned money. Is that because you wanted me softened up first? Receptive to your shady deal and your greenbacks?”
    “Fuck you, Joe, you never asked till now. And this is twenty grand we’re talking about.”
    It was more, so much more than Wilderness had expected. It was more than he could earn in two years. And Frank had just taken the wind out of his sails.
    “You’re surprised, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “And pleased?”
    “I could be.”
    “Joe, it says how much Steve wants his aunt out. You’re the guy to do this. I’ve told him that all along. I told him you don’t come cheap. The guys on the Brighton line might get you cheap, but this is New York. He’ll pay ten grand. Guaranteed. Cash. All he wants to hear from me now is that you’ll do it.”
    Down the avenue thirty blocks away, the western light was turning the Chrysler into a shimmer of beaten Krupp titanium, a shining spear of pure, impulsive folly a quarter of a mile high. It seemed to Wilderness that the skyscraper was female, a woman—it had to be—and she’d just winked at him. Folly to folly.
    “OK. I’ll do it.”
    “Great. Great, Absolutely fuckin’ great. It’ll be like old times. Berlin ’48 all over again. Only this time we don’t get caught!”
    “You didn’t get caught, Frank. I did.”
    §9
    He got back to the Gramercy late after another night at The Five Spot. Another note waiting for him at reception.
    “I’m in the bar.”
    No signature.
    “She’s been there awhile,” the desk clerk said.
    Wilderness could handle one more drink with Dorothy Shearer.
    It wasn’t Dorothy Shearer, it was Clarissa Troy.
    She’d worn well, scarcely a sign that she had aged in fifteen years, and he reckoned she must be getting on for fifty. Big eyes, big tits, and an habitual, kissable (not that he ever had) pout. All this in a five foot package—a pocket Venus.
    “What do I call you?”
    “Weeeellll kid, truth to tell I am Mrs. Troy. That really is my moniker. But you can call me Tosca—just like you used to.”
    “And Frank really doesn’t recognise you?”
    “Nope. That’s got to be the third time Arthur’s introduced us, and he’s never so much as blinked. He’s such a dumb fuck, which kinda brings me to the point. What the hell are you doing getting mixed up with Frank again?”
    “It’s different. This time it’ll be different.”
    “Joe . . . for fuck’s sake . . . you got caught . . . you damn near got killed. If it had been me I’d be crossing the sidewalk every time I saw Frank Spoleto heading my way.”
    “Trust me.”
    “Oh hell, kid. How much money has the bastard offered you?”

II
    Another Novel “Without a Hero”
    If this is a novel without a hero,
    at least let us lay claim to a heroine.
    William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair
    1847
    §10
    London : May 1941
    His mother died much as she had lived. In a pub. A daylight raid on London in the spring of 1941 by the Luftwaffe had taken out the Blackamoor’s Head, Matlock Street, E14. It was half an hour after lunchtime closing and had the landlord closed on time, the death toll might have been less than total. When they dug through the rubble they found Lily Holderness upright at the bar, a large if dusty gin and lime in her hand, stone dead.
    Her husband, Harry, was training with the Fifth Battalion of the East Kent Regiment in Wales—a survivor of Dunkirk, an event he spoke of with neither pride nor optimism. He called it his post-debacle course or “how-not-to-fuck-it-all-up-twice.”
    Her son, John, was thirteen. He could have been a scallywag of the streets, using parental neglect as the perfect excuse to run wild in the violent, ragged freedom of war. He was at school. He would never admit it, but he liked school. He hated teachers. One of the few things father and son would ever agree on was that the only good teacher was a dead one, but he liked learning and adored knowing. He collected knowledge without