Flowers From Berlin (25th Anniversary Edition) by Noel Hynd

Author:Noel Hynd [Hynd, Noel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Cat Tales Publishing, Los Angeles
Published: 2013-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

What emerged that afternoon was a portrait of a homesick, clean-cut, dutiful young naval officer, half-man and half-boy, and totally naïve to the malevolence of the world beyond Kansas.

"Is he dead?" asked one shipmate.

Cochrane wasn’t happy with a lie, but he was stuck with it. "This is a standard investigation. Ensign Pritchard is AWOL from a sensitive installation. Now, perhaps," Cochrane nudged firmly, "you could recall your friend's daily routine?"

At Reilly's, Pritchard's friend recalled, the young man liked to hobnob with the local females, and even shoot a round of darts with some of the English sailors, to whom he always lost.

"A terrible dart player!" another of Pritchard's friends remarked. "The worst in the house."

"Second worst," Buck Reilly, the bartender and owner, recalled that evening as he removed the padlock from his front doors and opened for business. "The worst was Pritchard's pal. The old man."

"What old man?" Cochrane asked.

"Elmer," said Buck Reilly, his ham-hock arms swinging at his sides as Cochrane followed. "And come to think of it, he's disappeared, too."

Cochrane took up a place at the end of the bar. "Elmer who?" he asked.

"I don't know Elmer who," said Reilly. "I don't learn last names unless a customer is behind on his tab. Elmer used to hang around here at nights."

"Continue," Cochrane asked.

Reilly blew his breath into a glass and polished the glass with his soiled apron. "Well, he was an old guy. I don't know how old, but he said he fought in the last war. Tall, but up a bit. Sallow complexion. Gray hair. Looked like a thousand other old men."

"Nothing strange about him?"

"Not that I recall."

"How did he get here?"

"What? To the bar?"

"Yes. Walk? Car? With friends?”

"Darned if I know."

"You never saw a car? Or a bicycle?"

"No, but I wouldn't have. Hey, I'm busy serving when this place is open. Stay around. You'll see."

"If he didn't live around here, he couldn't have walked," Cochrane said. "Particularly if he was old."

Reilly shrugged. "Now you tell me something," he said.

"If I can."

"Is Rosenfeld going to get us into the war? He is, isn't he? Franklin D. Rosenfeld?"

"I only work for the F.B.I.," Cochrane answered, a sudden fatigue overtaking him. "I've never been to the White House."

"Seems to me there's still eleven thousand Americans buried in France from the last war," Reilly said. "And for what? Know what I think? I think Mussolini is just what the dagos deserve. I can't buy a drop of liquor in New Jersey without paying the Don Macaronis. I hear Mussolini put them all out of business in Italy. That's why they all come here. And as for Hitler . . . as for Hitler," he repeated for emphasis, "well if there's anything worse than the Jews it's those filthy English. So I say, let Adolf eat them both alive."

Cochrane felt anger swelling inside him and did not understand how he suppressed it. Maybe it was professionalism, because his overwhelming instinct was to knock the flinty-eyed Reilly squarely in the jaw.

Instead, he

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