The Last Mission Read online

  On my last night home, Kay and her parents came to our house for dinner. It was an easy meal, with conversation from all sides of the table, ranging from the foolishness of playing major league baseball when all the players were in the service to my good fortune in going to Florida when no one else had the gasoline to get there. Then, with the women retired to the kitchen and my father off to look for a bottle of brandy, Kay’s father raised the avoided issue.

  He didn’t know what I was planning, and he certainly didn’t want to intrude, but he understood how difficult it was going to be for young people to pick up their lives after the war. And, if he could help in any way…

  I thanked him, but said I had no idea when “after the war” might be, or what kind of situation I might be facing.

  He could certainly appreciate how unpredictable the future was, but if Kay and I were being held back by a lack of money…

  I told him that money wasn’t even a factor at this point in time.

  Well, it was just that if there was any thought of Kay going down to Florida with me, and if we couldn’t see our way clear…

  I pretended ignorance, even though I knew exactly what he meant. At that time, in that place, the only acceptable way for his daughter to go anywhere with me would be as my wife. He was making a sincere and generous offer to support us in the early years of our marriage. I responded as if he were suggesting that he would pay Kay’s train fare if she decided to come down and visit me. We wouldn’t plan to see each other until I had a better grasp on my assignment, I told him. He nodded that he agreed with my caution, but I could see that he understood the deeper meaning of my response. His daughter and I had no announcement to make about ourselves, or about our plans for after the war. At the end of the evening she wished me the best, kissed me affectionately, and left with her parents. The next morning I left for Long Island and the military flight that would take me to my new job as instructor in the Advanced Bombing School.

  Sometime during the year that I was stationed there, I realized I had decided not to go back to England after the war. I wasn’t sure then, any more than now, exactly when I had come to that decision. There was no specific point when I made up my mind that Angela was in my past and not in my future. I didn’t know when the tide had reached its high-water mark until long after it receded.

  My work was demanding. To begin with, we were equipped with the B-29 Super Fortress, a plane as different from the B-17s I had flown as a 747 is from a Ford Tri Motor. Bigger, heavier, and vastly more powerful, it had completely different flying characteristics. I had to learn my job all over again. We were teaching a new kind of bombing, using radar instead of the familiar optical bombsight. That changed the profile of the mission, making my wartime experience useless. But the biggest change was that all the dangers were simulated. We weren’t in tight formations, with planes at each wing tip. Nobody on the ground was shooting up at us. Nor were there any fighters diving down on us with guns blazing, nor any voices on the intercom that were screaming out in terror or in pain. When we took off from Homestead, we climbed out to the coast, turned north past the Miami Beach hotels, and ran radar searches for targets that were floating off the beach at Boca Raton. For two or three hours we made bombing runs, dropping sand-filled bombs that kicked up geysers when they landed next to the rafts we were targeting. Then we flew back to the base and evaluated the results.

  In radar bombing, we never saw the targets and never saw our hits, so the evaluations were full of surprises. Commanding officers got furious when the iron bombs landed on the beach. “You idiots are going to kill civilians!” they would scream, even though there was no one living in Boca Raton at that time, and they were furious when the geysers were far out to sea. “You’re dropping miles from your targets!” But it was hard for me to work up any feelings of rage or frustration. After all, we had all come back alive, and over Germany we had frequently dropped our bombs miles from our targets.

  I never thought much about anything but the work at hand. Not about Angela. Not about Sergeant Browning’s murder investigation. Not about Colonel Mast and our missions over Germany. Not about Kay. Not about what the future might hold. My life seemed suspended somewhere between the clouds over Germany and the target rafts off Boca Raton. There was no reality outside of the war.

  And then the war was over. We were on a practice flight, still stunned by the thought that we would soon be dropping atomic bombs, when the news came in. We tried to land; there was no one in the control tower, and when we finally did get down, the space between the barracks looked like Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras. The party, only two hours old, was already in full swing. I was still in my flight jacket the next morning when I woke up under a table in the officers’ club.

  For a few days I wandered aimlessly around the base, bumping into other officers who were looking less and less like warriors. We were all going to seed. There were no daily orders, no meetings, no classes, nor any training flights. We were an army without a war, which was like a bank without money. We talked about what was probably going to happen to us, with possibilities ranging from assignments to the occupying forces to our return to the ranks of the civilian unemployed. Some thought that the Army Air Force would simply shut down, leaving us to find our own way home from Florida.

  Kay called several times, wondering when I would be coming home. Governor’s Island, she told me, was mustering out people as fast as they could cut the orders. I didn’t object, even in my mind, to the assumption that I would be coming home. That’s what everyone else was doing. So when the orders came and we were asked our travel destinations, I didn’t give a moment’s thought to England.

  By the end of September, I was a civilian. By January I was back in college, one of the older members of the junior class. That June, Kay and I were engaged. The following June we were married. Kay had been saving during our engagement, and I had been recruited out of college into a job as an insurance agent, so we had no trouble in signing the lease for our first apartment.

  It seems strange today, but we never lived together until we moved into that apartment, In fact, we never spent a night together. We dated on Friday nights, and then both of us went back home to our parents’ houses. Saturdays were spent in walks, car rides upstate, trips to the beach in the summer or to the ice rink in the winter. Sundays were spent with schoolwork. Mondays through Fridays Kay commuted to an editorial job in the city and I commuted to college. The best I can say for the routine is that it was safe. I wasn’t climbing into a bomber and flying through flak clouds into Germany. No one was shooting at me. The worst an engine failure could do was make me late for class.

  Kay was there, without any great effort on my part. She was supportive of my studies and excited over my prospects, and I was there without any great effort on her part. I made no demands during her workweek and showed up at her door like clockwork on Friday nights. Because we were together, we assumed that we were in love. And because we were in love, we assumed that we would marry. But in all that time we never made love. We held hands everywhere. Embraced and petted when we were alone. But we never bared ourselves to one another. We hinted at the day when we would be naked in one another’s arms, but we never discussed it, and certainly never did it. The world had returned to normal, and that was the normal conduct for the times. Respectable women didn’t. Honorable men never asked.

  Our wedding followed the tried-and-true guidelines. My friends became ushers, with a high school chum doing the honors as best man. Her friends became bridesmaids, her teenage sister serving as the maid of honor. We all assembled at the church in our rented morning suits and matching floor-length gowns, paraded between a couple hundred relatives and friends, and sat through a homily about Jesus’ presence at the wedding in Cana. (Later her father joked that he wouldn’t mind Jesus turning up when the caterer presented the liquor bill.) Then Kay and I recited the contract, as dictated by the minister.

  The reception was at her father’s country club, wi
th twenty-five tables, two hundred chicken dinners, and a six-piece orchestra that played the swing tunes left over from the war. Kay and I kissed, ate cake, danced with each other, with our parents, with our new in-laws, and with members of the wedding party. Then we went from table to table, where Kay had something to say to everyone—even my out-of-town relatives. I didn’t know where she had picked up an anecdote about my aunt Louise from Hartford or how she could possible remember the exact gift that each of the guests had sent. As I listened, I realized we had enough vegetable dishes to feed a good-sized army, and that if we plugged in all our home appliances at once we could probably take down the electric utility grid. But mostly, I was in absolute awe of my new wife. She was gracious, charming, and ruthlessly efficient. I could tell that if I just kept out of her way we would have a beautiful, tidy, well-managed home that would do both of us credit.

  I was also surprised to realize how truly beautiful Kay actually was. Her dress was the strapless style of the day, and her generous cleavage, soft shoulders, and long, elegant neck were just slightly tanned, making her skin sensual against the pure white background of her dress. Her hair was up high in an elegant style that suggested brains went along with the beauty, yet her smile was shy and her cheeks blushed. She was the perfect sacrificial virgin, dancing her way to her ritualistic deflowering.

  At the end of the afternoon we retired to a private room to change into our honeymoon outfits, but we observed the norms of our courtship rather than those of our new married relationship, taking turns getting dressed in the bathroom. Then Kay, in a pale cotton dress, and I, in a seersucker suit, were driven to the airport for our flight to Bermuda.

  I quickly found out just how thoroughly my wartime past in England had been erased by my return home. The plane was a Boeing Stratocruiser, a double-deck civilian version of the B-29 I had flown in Florida. The pilot who stepped aboard was my age. In a flash, I saw a career that would be wildly different and much more exciting than the business executive role I had trained for. I could become a pilot and fly to the world’s most dazzling cities, this time with no one shooting at me. It should be easy! I was experienced in four-engine aircraft. The airlines were growing rapidly into a new form of mass transportation that was threatening the railroads, and the military was no longer providing free flight training to all comers. Those of us who had flown during the war had a promising career laid out before us.

  “You know, I can fly this plane,” I told Kay.

  She was snuggled into my shoulder. “I know,” she whispered. “If something goes wrong, you can save us all.”

  I laughed. “Nothing will go wrong. What I mean is that I could fly this plane for a living. I could get a job with one of the airlines and make flying my career.”

  Her head snapped up. “Don’t be silly. You’d be away for days on end, just like the war. I want you home.”

  “It’s only a few days away each month—or maybe a couple of overnights.”

  “I don’t want you ever to be away,” Kay said. “You’ve already been away for half my life.”

  There wouldn’t be any flying to faraway places. Kay already had me slotted as a commuter.

  It was ten o’clock when we landed in Bermuda and nearly midnight when we tipped the bellman and found ourselves alone together in our beachfront suite.

  We were both dead tired, and it probably would have been smart to just fall asleep in one another’s arms, but we had a brand-new license for sex and an oversized bed. I guess neither of us wanted to be lacking in passion.

  Once again, we took turns undressing. I walked on the patio for half an hour while Kay prepared herself in the bathroom. When she emerged, she was in a long, gauzy robe over a white nightgown with a deep V-neck. She wore matching white satin slippers. Her hair was down, hanging in a wave close to her eye. She was as sexy as a decent girl was allowed to be. I took my turn getting into a pair of pajamas with an awning stripe. I hadn’t given them a thought when I bought them, but in the bathroom mirror they seemed a ridiculous choice for a honeymoon. I looked more like a wrapped gift package than a man in heat.

  We moved very tentatively into a sexual relationship, both determined not to shock or embarrass the other. During our week in Bermuda, we found what we enjoyed together, and what made one or both of us uncomfortable. Our passion was real, but it started only when we slipped into our own bed. Our love was real, but it was the background to our new relationship and not the reason for it. We didn’t need to cling fiercely to one another. There was nothing threatening to tear us apart.

  When we returned to our apartment, we were the perfect couple. And when our children were born, we became the perfect family. It worked well for Kit, who moved into a warm and satisfying relationship just like Kay’s and mine. It didn’t work so well for Todd, who demanded more from life than what we had to offer.

  Now

  Todd is clearly frightened as we leave Kit’s house and start downtown to the district attorney’s office. Our lawyer, Bob Bacon, has arranged the meeting to facilitate a plea bargain. “They really don’t want to take these drug buys into the courtroom,” he advised us after his meeting with the prosecutor. “The district attorney’s guy gets an agreement, he stands up and reads it to the judge, and the judge asks if you understand you’ve pleaded guilty. You say yes, and then the judge enters the agreement as the decision of the court.”

  “I’m sorry about this,” Todd mumbles, pulling nervously at his shirt collar. He has bought a white shirt and found an old tie in the back of his closet. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in a necktie since his high school graduation.

  “About what?”

  “About bringing you back from England. Screwing up your trip.”

  “No problem.”

  “It seems like I’m always fucking up something on you.”

  I smile. “You keep it interesting.”

  Todd laughs out loud. “Interesting, huh? That’s not what you used to call it. Disaster is the word I remember.” And then he mimics me. “You’re a fucking disaster!”

  I laugh. “The Andersons,” I say.

  “Jesus, but you were pissed.” Todd is rocking with joy. “I’ll never forget your face.”

  “How about Anderson’s face?” He sputters with new laughter. “Or Mrs. Anderson’s face?” He roars until his eyes fill with tears. “Jesus, I wish I had been looking in her direction.”

  “If you were, it wouldn’t have been so shocking. I don’t think she could even imagine sex in that position. And to open the door of her brand-new Cadillac, and have your bare ass come on with the light.” And now I’m laughing at a moment that was plainly hysterical—to everyone except the Andersons and me. “And when that young lady asked her to please close the door…” Now my eyes are blurring.

  “God, wasn’t she some pistol?”

  “What was her name?”

  Todd is gradually getting control of himself. “Sally. Sally something. She was a band hanger-on. She serviced the four of us, but she could have handled the New York Philharmonic—as long as they did her in a car. She turned frigid in a bed.”

  “If you had just used our car, the Andersons probably would never have seen you.”

  “We were stoned, for God’s sake. We thought it was your car.” And we’re both laughing again.

  Finally, while we’re stopped at a traffic light, the laughter wanes. The meeting we’re heading for isn’t funny at all. Todd struggles with the silence, then he clears his throat. “But I meant what I said. I’ve given you a lot of grief. You have every right to tell me to fuck off. Instead, you break off your trip and put yourself in hock…”

  “It doesn’t seem like it’s all that much,” I say, trying to put an end to his discomfort. “Let’s put it off until we get this meeting behind us.”

  He nods, but I can see he’s hurt. Apologizing to me has to be painful for him. He probably wants to get it over with just as much as he wants to get through the hearing.

  Another
traffic light. I begin to hum. Todd can’t stand the silence. “So how was your detective work coming before I interrupted? Have you nailed your murderer?”

  I have to crank backward to the week past. “I think so, but I have to see what the detective found out. There are a lot of notes that I still have to read.”

  “One of your fellow flyboys, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s what I figured. I had built up quite a case, but I never turned the evidence over to the detective. I should have, but…”

  “But what?”

  “These guys were flying with me. I guess I felt we ought to stick together. Like you and your high school chums. Remember when you all took a week’s detention rather than turn in the guy who had keyed the principal’s car?”

  “Yeah, but your friend killed a lady just for cheating on him.”

  “No, no. Not that kind of cheating.” I begin explaining the insurance assignments that some of our guys had made to her—how the odds of us getting killed were so high that our military insurance was a damn good investment.

  “So one of your guys figured out he was being taken and killed her?”

  “That’s the way it looked, but we couldn’t be sure. Maybe she was being financed by one of the criminal types. God knows there were enough of them. They stole everything off our bases except the airplanes. Maybe she held out on some gangland thug. For a while that made more sense to me than one of our guys. In spite of the business we were in, none of us were killers. We were just babes in the woods.”

  I turn in behind the courthouse. With my usual caution, I allowed too much time. We’re more than a half-hour early for the meeting so I suggest a cup of coffee and maybe a muffin. Todd follows me across the street into a breakfast-and-lunch diner.

  I’m buttering a blueberry muffin when he suddenly asks, “You still have those medals?”