Bliss, Remembered (43 page)

“I figured maybe.” Then he pleaded a little: “Look, why don’t you lemme go, and I’ll just get outta your hair?”

“You think I’m born yesterday?” I said.

And then, Teddy, Goldstein said something every bit as stupid as what I’d said a few minutes earlier. He thought he was bein’ so smart. He kinda snarled at me: “Well, have it your way, sister, because once you turn me in, the only name I’m givin’ the bastards is your old lover boy. And they’ll get that sonuvabitch traitor for sure. They’ll find him.” He shook his wrist then. It was pretty bruised from me clubbing him with that duck.

And I thought: yeah.

Yeah. Of course, Goldstein was gonna tattle on Horst. I’d already figured that, but now my mind began to turn over, Teddy. I was very calm, very rational. I just thought to myself how Goldstein was as good as executed the minute the FBI got him. They hadn’t even wasted any time hanging those saboteurs they’d caught who’d snuck in on the U-Boats—and those guys hadn’t even managed to do anything. But that’s what you do to spies. You hang them. In wartime, you kill them.

And I thought about Horst, Teddy. I thought about Jimmy, too. I did. How he was gone, killed in the war. And I thought about Horst and how he still loved me and how much I’d loved him once and maybe I had never stopped loving him, but, anyway, I knew I’d love him again.

And so, Teddy, just like that, I pulled the trigger.

I pulled the trigger. I executed him. Actually, I pulled it a second time, but that was probably unnecessary. Remember, I was holding that pistol only a foot, maybe eighteen inches from him, pointed right at his heart, and Goldstein was probably dead even before I pulled the trigger the second time.

Oh, understand, Teddy, I knew exactly what I was doing. It wasn’t like shooting a duck or a dove. I knew I was murdering another human being. Thou shalt not kill—right? But I did it without blinking an eye. I’m sure I didn’t feel any different than the Jap did who mowed Jimmy down on Tulagi. It was just a bit of the war, Teddy. In a strange place. But . . . just a bit of the war.

So, do you hate me now? Do you hate your mother now that you know she’s a murderer?

See, Teddy, I’d simply decided that he was going to be executed, so I might as well be the executioner. And, of course, not that it mattered, but it did spare him any agony. He never had a clue. Never in a million years did he figure this nice, young, pregnant girl from the Shore was gonna kill him in cold blood. You know, Teddy, I don’t even remember any expression on his face. He was dead before he could be surprised. He just slumped back and then tumbled over to the side on the sofa, and the blood started to stain his shirt, sort of oozin’ out. But I barely noticed.

I just kept sittin’ there, holdin’ the gun, and wonderin’, did I do it to save Horst, or did I do it because I wanted Horst? Did you do it for love, Trixie, or did you do it for yourself? And you know, Teddy, I’ve never lost a minute’s sleep over the fact that I killed that man. But I have spent all these years wondering what led me to do it.

I did have the presence of mind to call out to Gentry Trappe that I was all right, so he came runnin’ back into the room, and I told him that Goldstein had tried to take the gun from me, so I had to shoot him, and he commiserated with me, that a young lady had had to shoot someone in self-defense, but I assured him I was fine, and then he told me he’d call the police. That’s when I finally got up outta that chair. I hadn’t moved the whole time, Teddy. But I had to stretch, and I said, “No, Mr. Trappe. We’re not gonna call the police. Or anybody.”

“We’re not?”

“No, we’re gonna take Mr. Goldstein and dump him out here in the river. We’re gonna deposit him in Davey Jones’ locker.”

My gracious, Teddy, but you should’ve seen the expression on Mr. Trappe’s face.

Of course, Teddy, it was all very unreal—or “surreal,” as everybody says now. For only at that point did it begin to seriously enter my consciousness that there was a dead man, who I’d killed in my bathing suit, lying on the sofa in our living room. My practical side kinda kicked in at this point, though, and I told Mr. Trappe I’d explain, but first I ran upstairs to get some towels so Goldstein wouldn’t bleed all over the darn place.

I hurried back with the towels and covered up the body, but I’d noticed my shower curtain when I’d grabbed the towels, so I ran back up to my bathroom and yanked that off the rod and came back down, and we wrapped Goldstein in that.

“Miss Trixie . . . ?” Gentry began then. I mean, I did owe him an explanation. But the magnitude of what I’d done finally hit me, and I began to cry for real. I said, “Let’s go in the kitchen,” and we went out to the table in the pantry. There were pantries then, Teddy. My gracious, I haven’t thought about pantries in a coon’s age.

So I got us glasses of ice water, and we sat down, and I said, “Now listen, this isn’t going to make any sense to you, but that man is a Nazi spy.” Naturally, Gentry looked at me like I had lost my marbles. So I went on: “Remember when I went to the Olympics in Germany?” And he nodded. “Well, I met some people there, and in a roundabout way, Mr. Trappe, that’s what brought that man here. He was looking for someone I know. And I appreciate that might be hard to understand, but you just hafta trust me, because if we go to the FBI, it can hurt someone else. Someone who’s good.”

He nodded, sort of. So I went on: “I know this isn’t fair, but I promise you, whatever happens, nothing will happen to you. All right?”

It was obvious that he was still pretty dubious—which I certainly would’ve been had our positions been reversed—but he managed to give me the benefit of the doubt, saying, “All right, Miss Trixie.”

And, Teddy, I stuck out my hand then, and I said, “Sydney.” He cocked his head, unsure what I’d meant by me just saying my name, so I explained: “Mr. Trappe, you and me’ve known each other for a long time, and I think it’s time we got on a first-name basis. So I’m Sydney and you’re Gentry. Okay?” And he agreed and shook my hand.

We couldn’t get rid of Goldstein’s body till it was dark, so we set about planning. First, I put on a pair of sneakers and some old overalls over my WSA bathing suit. Then we dragged the body out of the house, around back. There was an old anchor in the shed and behind it some cinder blocks that had been there for a million years. I asked Gentry to get a wheelbarrow and haul them down to the dock. Next, I moved Goldstein’s car, hiding it behind the shed. Then I set about the incredibly unpleasant task of taking the clothes off the body. If it did somehow manage to pop up off the river bottom and float up, I knew that the fewer ways to identify him the better. Well, I did leave him in his underclothes. I couldn’t imagine that they could possibly help identify him. Besides, as they say now, Teddy: I just didn’t want to go there.

So after I got his clothes off, right before I was going to pull the shower curtain back around him, I couldn’t help but stop and look at his face. It was quite placid, really. Remember, Teddy, I’d just shot him in his heart. And I couldn’t help but study that face. It was not bad-looking. It was just another face. And it occurred to me that I’d be the last person on this earth who’d ever see that face, so even though I was the one who’d killed him, I couldn’t help but take what I guess you’d call a sort of proprietary interest, so you know what I did, Teddy?

Well, I kneeled over him and took my hand and smoothed his hair down. He was already stone cold, of course, and it was spooky, but I somehow felt that it was the least I could do. You see, it occurred to me that if some Japanese soldier had come across Jimmy’s body before our boys got to it, I would’ve hoped they wouldn’t’ve done anything disrespectable to it. Just because it was war, I didn’t think you had to be hateful to the dead bodies.

And that made me think of Jimmy again, so I had to pause for a moment. I sat back down on the ground, looking away from Goldstein, and remembered my dear Jimmy. That brought on more tears—but not for what I’d done, you understand. Just for poor Jimmy. For your father.

After a while, I composed myself again, and turned back and wrapped the shower curtain all around Goldstein. I got up then, and I looked down, and I said, “May God bless you.”

Yes, I’ve never been much for that rot-in-hell business. He was dead. I’d made him pay for his sins here. I was just really sayin’, ‘Well, God, it’s your business now.’ I mean, Teddy, I never forgot that if Gentry Trappe hadn’t showed up when he did, I’m sure Goldstein would’ve killed me. There but for the grace of God—right?

Oh, I don’t know, Teddy. In a way it wasn’t at all personal. It was just the war. Anyway, that was the end of that. I started goin’ through his effects.

His wallet had a driver’s license, which did indeed identify him as Jeremiah R. Goldstein, age forty-three. It was pretty easy back then to make up new names and such. He had $187 in cash, which was a lot of money to carry in those days. And he had a couple of blank checks and various notes and cards. No pictures—no photographs. I guess spies don’t carry that sort of thing.

Anyway, I took all that there was back to the shed, and with some strong scissors, I cut everything up but the money and put it in the garbage. I gave Gentry the $187. He was a little reluctant to take it, but it was such a considerable sum, whatever compunctions about the source of the filthy lucre were soon overcome.

We waited till well into the night. The only boat we had wasn’t much more than a rowboat with an outboard, and it took us a while to figure out how to ideally position the body. Eventually, we decided that the best way would be to place it—still wrapped in my shower curtain, now—up near the bow, cross-wised, so that his head and shoulders hung over one side and his legs the other. See, once we got the anchor and the cinder blocks tied to him, that would be the easiest way to push him overboard without swamping the boat. Over the bow.

It was past eleven when we pushed off, Gentry up front, making sure the body didn’t fall off before we tied the dead weights to it, me in the back steering the little putt-putt. I don’t know how deep the river was, but we all knew the Chester had a good channel, because big ships used to dock in Chestertown in the colonial days. It had been a very serious port at one time. Certainly, it was plenty deep for our particular purposes. I knew that.

There was only very little moon and no other boats on the river at that hour, and when we got out to the middle of the river, I cut the motor and let us drift in the darkness. But just then, Teddy, at that very moment when we were dead in the water with a body hangin’ over the bow, suddenly we had a terrible bright light shining right on us. It felt like the whole world could see us. Gentry whispered, “Oh Lord,” and I just held my breath.

In another moment I realized it was headlights from a car on the other side of the river. High beam shinin’ right at us. Bright as day, us caught red-handed with a body.

Gentry said, “Is it the po-lice?”