“We’ve noticed that.”
“Check the records. One of your surgeons put it in there four years ago. Instead of getting treatment after his beating, Dad was abandoned to die. Then I rescued him and got him to you. How is he?” The connection was breaking up, and I didn’t have a lot of time.
“He’s stable, and conscious. He’s been asking for you, and for someone named Floyd.”
I realized there was one thing I desperately needed to know from Dad. “This is incredibly important. I need you to ask him something. Ask him what color Captain Markowicz’s hair is.”
“What?”
“Just ask the question. Lives depend on it.” Well, mine probably did, at any rate. “Please, Doctor, I’m running out of time here.”
The phone banged down again, and there was more yelling. I heard stomping around for few moments, then Rubenstein came back on. “Frankly, I’m amazed that he understood the question. Mr. Dunham said the Captain’s hair is blond.”
Good old Dad. Drunk as a skunk, broke the man’s arm in a fight, but he could remember what color Markowicz’s hair was. The real Markowicz wouldn’t have beaten Dad half to death and dumped him. That meant the red-headed man I had run over with the Doc’s Cadillac probably was the real Captain Markowicz, United States Army CID I’d bet my good right leg that nobody had died in Kansas City — the third, dead Captain Markowicz was just one of the lies fed to me by those two fascist sympathizers, Hauptmann and Milliken.
“Tell Officer Krieger to keep Dad under tight guard,” I yelled into the worsening connection. “And don’t let anybody from the Butler County Sheriff’s Department see him.”
The line went dead. I didn’t know if Rubenstein had caught the last part. There was nothing I could do about it now. I glanced over at Floyd and realized that he had heard my entire side of the phone call. He was just watching me with an expression of calm curiosity, recovered from his fit of emotions.
I smiled at him, despite myself.
Susie Mae came back on the line. “Vernon? I’ve got the Police Department ready to speak to you.”
“Put them through,” I said. I looked at the various screens. The fighters still circled, but they weren’t firing at Pegasus right now. We zigzagged close to the ground, circling the towers and tanks of the refinery complex in an evasion pattern. There were police and soldiers all over the place below us. Pinkhoffer or Chief Davis must have called out the State Police, or maybe all the local cops and county Sheriff’s Deputies within driving distance.
“Vernon? Is that you? Ollie Wannamaker here.”
Good old Ollie. He really had tried to help me, maybe the one true blue person left in my life. “Hey Ollie,” I said. “You were right to try to warn me off. I’m in a world of trouble here.”
“Where are you now?”
“Stupid question, Ollie. I need to speak with Colonel Pinkhoffer.”
“He’s not here. I’ve got one of his officers here, a Lieutenant Morgan from CID.”
Morgan? It couldn’t be the same Morgan who called me about Dad. Could it?
“Ollie, this is real important. Trust me, scout’s honor. Only answer yes or no to what I ask you. Is Morgan’s hair blond?”
“Uh, Vern…”
“Yes or no Ollie! Please.”
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“Is his arm in a cast, or maybe a sling?”
“Yes, he’s got a broken arm.”
Oh ho, I thought. The false Captain Markowicz appears. Then I realized what Ollie had said. “I told you to say yes or no!” I hissed.
Ollie sounded exasperated. “Look, Vernon, what are you getting at?”
“Ollie, he’s the guy that tried to kill Dad, dumped him in the trunk of my car, and probably burned down Mrs. Swenson’s boarding house. I think he’s a Nazi agent.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Ollie said. “And you’re out of my jurisdiction. I’m not going to talk with you any more. Here’s Lieutenant Morgan. You can deal with him now.”
“Morgan here,” said a new voice. A familiar voice.
“Morgan? Deputy Bobby Ray Morgan?”
“No,” said Morgan shortly. “I am Lieutenant Christopher Morgan.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “And you wouldn’t have called me yesterday morning at the library about my dad, would you? I know who you are, and you’re not going to get away with it.” It was a stupid line from a dozen different movies, but I didn’t know what else to say.
“Yes,” said the voice carefully, “that may be the case. But I think you’re confused about the outcome of the situation.” He was being cautious. Ollie was obviously still in the room with him. “Why don’t you land the airplane and we’ll discuss it?”
Morgan’s sheer arrogance was bugging the heck out of me. “Why don’t you jump in the lake, you Nazi scum,” I screamed. I hoped like heck Susie Mae heard that. At least there’d be gossip after they killed me. “Pegasus, cut the connection.”
“Yes,” said Pegasus.
We continued to fly tight, fast circles that wove through the refinery. I seemed to have run out of both energy and good judgment. At least Dad was safe. “Who’s a Nazi scum?” asked Floyd, interrupting my pointless train of thought.
“Don’t you all know each other?”
Floyd looked offended. “Hey, I’m no Nazi.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you took their money, didn’t you? What’s the difference?” I asked. I was honestly curious, and this was the first he’d said about it directly. Pegasus’ urgings not to judge echoed in my mind.
Floyd looked uncomfortable. “I was just a guy making a buck. They wanted the airplane shipped out of Europe, I knew how to work the system to do that. I didn’t really think they would come all the way over here to claim it, what with the war over and all.”
“So you sold it to the Mafia?”
“Well, when Daddy told me he’d gotten word to watch out for a large shipment from Europe from Mr. Neville and those people, I knew it was valuable. The Reds wouldn’t activate their contacts here without a damned good reason. But they wouldn’t have given us much for it, and they’re hard to deal with.” He hung his chin onto his chest. “Those Reds are crazy bastards.”
There was the pot calling the kettle black, I thought. “You mean it was just a coincidence that your father was the Russian contact here while you were working for the Germans?”
“Actually, yes.” Floyd looked embarrassed. “When you look at it that way, it’s almost funny.”
“Then you called the Kansas City mob.”
“I told you, we didn’t expect anyone to show up for it,” he said defensively. “From either side. Then Mr. Neville turned up anyway. If Mama hadn’t written to the Sheriff, there never would have been a problem. She wasn’t supposed to know about Daddy’s Red connections — he’d always passed them off as part of his shine business, when it was the other way around. But Mr. Neville made me take care of the problem.”
His face fell, pleading, almost desperate. “It was her or me, Vernon. Neville put his gun to my head after he and Daddy tied Mama up. It was all I could do to keep them from killing her. Neville, he’s NKVD. They’re maniacs, make the Nazi Gestapo look like a Boy Scout troop.”
“Oh God, Floyd,” I said. He’d been pretty rattled by his experiences in Europe, I was sure of it, whatever he’d actually done in the war. Then to go through this, in his own home, and have to pretend to like it. No wonder he swung back and forth between being a tough guy and being a victim. Pegasus was right. I hated what he’d become, but I couldn’t hate him.
Floyd went on. “Then when Ollie came out, because of all the trouble you got into with the boarding house fire, and wrecking Doc Milliken’s car, I had to hide Mama. That’s why you found her. If you hadn’t, no one else would have needed to get hurt.”