And if they thought he was something, he wondered what sort of ripple went up and down when Ms. O'Brien emerged from the car. East Tupelo wasn't used to women like that, not yet. Hell, neither was the rest of America. That skirt of hers would surely send tongues wagging, showing off so much leg above the knee as it did.
But it was time to get into character, so he pasted a harmless, well-meaning expression on his dial. A neutral grin that said to the world he was hoping he'd found the right address.
Slim Jim took in the details of the kid's house in one quick glance. Again, he didn't need to stare. It was all old news to him. There'd be only two rooms running off one corridor. You could shoot a gun clean through without hitting anything, hence the name. The kid would probably sleep where Slim Jim himself had for years, on an old sofa in the front room-which did double duty as a kitchen, and a parlor when guests came a-calling. Every stick of furniture would be someone else's cast-offs, but it'd most likely be clean. Gladys would make sure of that.
The water would be pumped by hand, from a well out in the backyard. There'd be bare boards on the floor and walls. No little comforts or luxuries. Not a blade of grass grew in the brown dirt that substituted for a front yard. Even in the gloom, he recognized the scratch marks of a homemade dogwood broom in the hard-packed earth, and the telltale prints of chicken feet. He bit down on a sigh. It was going to be like a goddamned oven in there.
He really missed his brownstone.
2
He'd expected some changes. Even so, after an hour or more in Los Angeles, Chief Petty Officer Eddie Mohr felt like his head had been turned inside out. Sort of like an old sock.
He felt awkward as hell in his new "twenty-first" uniform. Figured people woulda been staring and pointing at him like he was some sort of carnival freak as he walked through the train station. But it was Mohr himself who had to resist the urge to stop and gawk, while nobody else gave him as much as a second glance. Most didn't even notice him the first time around.
He'd stood on the concourse at Union Station for a long time, ever since he'd painfully uncurled himself from one of the hard, cheap seats on the Super Chief. The station was roaring with foot traffic. Sailors from what they were calling the Old Navy lounged around in their best whites, clearly in no rush to get away to the South Pacific. Hundreds of civilians swarmed over the bright mosaic floor, too, their shoes clicking and scuffing on the tiles. Many of them were of fighting age, but none seemed to be bothered that somebody might front them about why they hadn't signed up yet. Or been drafted.
Mohr wandered through, hauling the dead weight of his duffel bag as if it were a side of beef. Occasionally he'd spot a uniform like his own, the coloring slightly different from the local rig, the cut a little more stylish. At least that's how some fairy from New York called it.
His old man had read that article from the Post out loud, howling with laughter, tears streaming down his face. "Lookit this, Ethel," he'd yelled out to the kitchen. "Lughead here's standin' at d' cuttin' edge a fashion."
Maybe that's why Mohr was rolling and twitching his shoulders so much inside the new uniform. To steady his balance. Meanwhile, he did his best to avoid catching the eye of anybody else who looked to be headed out to the Zone, to the raw, sprawling settlements and industrial "parks," as they called them. Not a one of them looked much like a fucking park to Eddie Mohr, though. Just a bunch of big sheds and warehouses with a few scraggly fucking eucalyptus trees for shade. Some of them, they didn't even seem to have workers inside. It was like the machines ran themselves.
He scowled then, and remembered Midway. Machines running themselves-that's what had caused the whole class-A fuckup to begin with. That's why he never went out near the factories if he could avoid it.
He'd seen that movie, the one with the muscle man in it. A kraut, and he'd been the goddamned governor of California, if you could believe it! In the movie, the machines had tried to take over the world. He felt like it was about two minutes from happening whenever he set foot in some of them factories out in the Valley.
Somebody bumped into him then, knocking the duffel bag off his shoulders. "Sorry, mac," the guy called out as he hurried away, not even bothering to turn around.
Some long-haired gimp. Mohr snorted in disgust. Probably wearing an earring, too.
He found himself standing in front of the station's Harvey House restaurant. It was full of officers and their dates. Freshly minted war brides some of them, to judge by the painfully happy smiles and that just-been-fucked glow about the cheeks. And a fair swag of gold diggers, too, if his suspicions played true. They were probably dizzy with the prospect of the ten-grand GI's insurance they'd pocket if their "dearly beloved" got himself shot to pieces along with old Dugout Doug.
Mohr's whole body ached with fatigue, and his fractured skull-or at least the cracks they'd fixed up with some sort of plastic cement-throbbed in a dull, far-off kind of way.
His train had left Chicago early, and he'd rested only fitfully on the long haul across the continent. He thought about grabbing a sit-down sandwich or a burger at Harvey's. He could see they ran a desegregated joint-a lot of places in California seemed to these days. There were a couple of uniformed Negroes and some Chinese-looking fellas eating in there. Even had some white folk with them. But he thought he could still detect a sort of no-go area around them. The place was packed, but a few empty chairs seemed to be scattered around their table. Still, they were being served, and left in peace.
That wouldn't have happened six months ago.
He propped himself on the arm of a big leather chair for a moment. If he weren't so tired, he would have marveled at the thing. It was a much flashier piece of furniture than had ever graced the Mohr family home, and here it was stuck in a goddamn train station. Somebody had left behind a crumpled copy of the L.A. Times, and he flicked through it idly while he waited for the bus out to Fifty-one.
Bad move.
Right there on the second fucking page was a picture of that fucking idiot Slim Jim Davidson, grinning up a storm!
He had some poor kid tucked under one arm and some flint-eyed dame who just had to be twenty-first lurking at his shoulder. In his other hand, he was waving around a giant cardboard check written out for twenty thousand dollars.
Mohr felt a wave of acid rise in his gut, and he hadn't even gone for the burger yet. He tried not to read the story, but he couldn't help himself. Davidson had bought himself another singer, name a' Presley, and a whole bunch of this kid's tunes were gonna be released over the next six months. Mohr snorted when he read that a "significant" percentage of the profits was being channeled straight into a war-bond drive. It'd be one tenth of 1 percent of fuck all compared with the bribes that little weasel had paid out to get himself taken off active duty and assigned to "special services" with the USO. Mohr bitterly regretted not hammering Davidson flat when he'd had the chance back on their ship.
On the Astoria, he'd had the little crook under his thumb; now he was just like everyone else-reduced to following the adventures of Slim Jim in the papers and the newsreels. Mostly that involved watching him getting richer and richer. But Davidson was a sneaky little shit, and it seemed every time he fell ass-backwards into a pile of someone else's money, he made sure to donate a big whack of it to some war widow or an orphaned kid, or some dogface with his dick shot off. So now everybody loved Slim Jim Davidson. Walter fucking Winchell wouldn't shut up about the jerk.