So when Lenkva hit Anzio he didn’t run because he was scared. He ran because he figured it was best that way all around. And he made it. He made it from Corporal Lenkva to Joe Lenken, Italy, tavern owner and lover of Fannys.
Or if they caught Charley driving a truck with the wrong kind of merchandise in the back and they should look at his papers a little too long, they would find he’d been Charley all along, but the first time he changed his last name was when he ran away from home. Home wasn’t much good, with too many brothers and sisters and not enough mother and father. So he picked fruit for a while and then the season was over. He washed dishes in Frisco, got a good look at the bums on Mission Street, but that was too much like home so he ran again. He learned being a carpenter where the developments mushroomed in the valley next to Los Angeles and that was all right until they got organized there. He had saved his dough so he ran again. When he walked into the little town at the foot of the Rockies he had another name, just from habit. There wasn’t any building going on there so he started to pump gas for Old Benton, who had the only station for miles around. Just when Charley bought a piece of Old Benton’s garage the draft caught up with him and being a fast liar and the only available male in town, Charley made private in nothing flat. He stayed that way until Anzio and when it came to the point where the platoon was gone, all dead, Charley was still alive. That had been luck.
From there on it wasn’t luck but determination, or at least luck used to his best advantage. Charley ran again. He ran good that time—so good he figured he’d never run again, not change his name again except this one time when he went underground—and watched the advantages. Victory made everybody generous, which was an advantage, and when Charley showed up again he was an American immigrant with an easy way about business, smiling most of the time because that’s how his face was built. If he was worried or if he had eyes in the back of his head, it didn’t show. Charley didn’t drink in the afternoon and he didn’t have a nervous smoking habit. All he did was eat aspirin, and few people knew about that.
Chapter Three
CHARLEY STOPPED RATTLING the aspirin box.
“If they look too hard we got a problem,” he said.
“So run,” said Joe.
It caught Charley by surprise, as if Joe was showing him the door but didn’t think he was going to use it himself.
“So run,” Joe said again.
Charley got up. When it stung him where the bandage was he hardly noticed.
“Run! I’m through running, you bastard! I’m sticking where I am because I like standing still for once, and I’m not doing you any favors and lam out of here pulling the chase after me. If they get me, Joe, they get you!”
“Not me, Chuck. With me everything’s legit.”
Charley sat down. He was grinning.
“Do tell. Like what, Joey? You going to marry little Fanny?” but Charley saw how the joke wasn’t making any dent. When Joe folded his arms he suddenly looked even bigger than he was.
“It’s like this, Chuck. They’re not looking for me, and if they were they couldn’t prove a thing. I been running the osteria and minding my own business at home. Right, Chuck?”
Charley nodded, kept listening.
“And if they get you, Chuck, you wouldn’t drag me into it, would you, Chuck?”
“Don’t get cute.”
“So there’s nobody after me in this country. I got Italian papers good as gold. Citizenship, Chuck. You didn’t know that, did you, Chuck?”
Charley hadn’t known that.
“Perhaps I look stupid, Chuck—”
“You do.”
“—but I’m not.”
“No, you’re not.”
“And I’ll show you why. That Corporal Lenkva you keep talking about, let’s say Uncle Sam is still looking for him. If they find him that means extradition. I can fight extradition, Chuck, because the Italians would have to arrest me—except they don’t arrest peaceful citizens that got no record and just run a tavern up in the outskirts. And here’s the payoff, Chuck. Uncle Sam’s not looking for me.”
“Oh no. They just want you to have a good time with Fanny and not bother about a little thing like a general court martial for desertion.”
Joe laughed and the sound bounced around for a while without going up or down.
“That’s the truth, Chuck. Remember that G.I. insurance? Well, it’s been seven years and more, so if somebody wants to collect they can make a request after seven years. The court declares me dead and they collect the money. That’s what my mother did. She went and had me declared dead and collected the ten thousand. So now it’s even legit for Uncle Sam. I’m dead and nobody’s looking.”
Charley thought about that and saw it was a neat setup. Joe hadn’t wasted his time. He had played all the angles. He was dead in the States and alive in Italy—with papers to prove it. When Joe said they were good as gold he must be sure they were. Joe had had ten years to find himself the best—so did Charley, except he hadn’t. He’d been glad to be standing still, to buy a residence permit once, a forged passport another time, and a birth certificate that didn’t match. He’d been standing still letting things drift, never worrying about details. But Joe, the moron . . .
“Joe, that insurance deal. I got—”
“Who’s your beneficiary, Chuck?”
“Old Benton. The old guy with the gas station.”
Joe shook his head and crossed his arms the other way. “No good, Chuck. You told me he’d died the year after you left, and had no heirs except you. Whoever you were then. And you never changed beneficiaries, did you, Chuck?”
He hadn’t. Just one of those things.
“Just one of those things, huh, Chuck? Uncle Sam figures you might be alive, the carabinièri know you are, and you know you haven’t got any papers. Messy, Chuck.”
Messy. Smart boy Charley who’d been on his own ever since he ran off from home, too smart to bother with details because details were for morons—he finally got it what a clever moron Joe Lenken was and how stupid a smart guy could be. Like all the other times when he had started to run.
“How’d you get those papers, Joe? From Del Brocco?”
“Naw. Del Brocco’s a forger. My papers are the real stuff I told you.”
“All right, where’d you get them? Don’t sit there like a lurch. You want this thing to blow wide open?”
“I told you, Chuck. I’m safe.”
Charley came around to Joe’s chair and bent down.
“Lenken, you’re safe as long as I’m safe. So don’t be coy with your Charley horse, Joe, because when I sink, you sink. Remember?”
“You’d drag me in?”
“No. But I wouldn’t make an effort to keep you out. Now listen to me. They may never get to me and then again they might. I’m leaving for Rome to see Del Brocco. Meanwhile—”
Somebody tapped on the door.
“Joey, you in there?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Joey, it’s me.”
“Who in hell—”
“Marco. I got to see you, Joey.”
“Talk through the