Hours of Gladness Read online

  Mick followed Luong out the back gate of the cemetery down another path that took them to the river. They got there in time to hear the assassination team paddling away. Mick fired sixty rounds in their direction, the M16’s red tracers winging over the dark water, Luong’s M1 banging beside him.

  Back in the cemetery, almost in syncopation, Sullivan and the other marines opened fired on the VC detachment who had been waiting to cream them if they had charged down the main street to help Lam. The VC had tried to come through the cemetery and use the same path to the river Luong had used with Mick. The marines had four bodies to display in the marketplace the next morning. Around noon, one of the assassination squad washed up with the high tide.

  None of that brought Lam back to life. His body was a piece of mangled meat. They buried him in the cemetery while his mother wept and clawed at her eyes. The VC had now killed her husband, all four of her sons, and five of her nephews.

  Ten days later, Nguyen Thang Phac arrived to take Lam’s place as district chief of police. One look at his elongated frame and lean, haunted face and Mick knew the jokes were over. Lam was a killer who had laughed at death. Phac was a killer who no longer laughed at anything.

  WELCOME TO ATLANTIC CITY. The billboard displayed towering casinos, a sun-swept beach and ocean, svelte women and handsome men beside gaming tables. Past more billboards urging you to lose your shirt at individual casinos Mick roared, his mind, his body, recoiling from what he was going to see and hear in this bedeviled town. But it was better than the unreeling. Better than another night in Binh Nghai.

  TINSEL TOWN

  The clock on the dashboard read 4 A.M. as Mick rolled into Atlantic City’s wet, deserted streets. The usual dozen bums were huddled in doorways freezing to death. One or two of their ragged friends rooted in garbage cans looking for Christ knows what.

  The last time Mick had come down here, he had spotted an ex-marine, Minus One Haines, around the garbage cans. Minus One was the nickname the drill sergeant had pinned on him in boot camp because he could not do anything right. Mick had tried to help Haines, a runty loser from Bayonne who thought becoming a marine would make him six feet six. Mick had gotten him through boot camp. He had learned a lot about being a leader, working on Minus One.

  Haines had wanted to come to Binh Nghai with Mick, but he had turned him down. Mick had picked only the best for Binh Nghai. He remembered the hurt look on Minus One’s face. He had stepped forward with twenty other volunteers when he saw Sergeant O’Day was in command. Was that why Minus One was rooting in garbage cans? Did he have him on his conscience too? Mick wondered.

  At the boardwalk and Delaware Avenue, Mick parked the car and took off his badge, slung a shoulder holster under his arm, and shoved his .38 in it. Without his hat and with his dark blue jacket zipped, he might have been a bus driver. Sometimes in the summer, ferrying drunks to Paradise Beach police headquarters, he felt like one.

  In the casino, the freezing wind and rain that had lashed him on the boardwalk ceased to matter. He was in the warm, glowing world of the Arabian nights. On the ceiling were a million tiny, twinkling stars; in a dim corner a swing band blared and a fat black singer in a white sequined gown wailed about her lack of love. She was singing to mute rows of blank-eyed slot machines, like a humanoid performing on a Star Wars asteroid. The slots sluggers had long since boarded their buses and rolled home to Allentown and Paramus. Only the big bettors were still on duty, watching the cards slither from the draw poker machine, the roulette wheel spin, the craps dice dance.

  Not a few of these insomniacs were women. It was amazing how many women came here alone. In front of the first baccarat table, with a pile of chips high enough to ski down, stood a shapely blonde about forty in another all-white outfit, down to her shoes. What was her name? Mick reached into his cop’s memory and produced it: Jacqueline Chasen, granddaughter of old Marcus Teitlebaum, who had once owned all of Leeds Point. His heirs had subdivided it into sleek, modern houses on tiny lots and made a bundle.

  Jacqueline Chasen looked at him and some sort of recognition seemed to flicker in her mascaraed eyes. She had been a brunette the last two times Mick saw her. Remember me, baby, from your beach-blanket-bingo days? Mick was tempted to ask the question but he decided against it. She was class. Everyone in Paradise Beach had talked about making a pass at her, but no local had ever got close. She was still looking classy, if a bit long in the tooth. The white outfit, the pearls, probably meant a heavy escort was around somewhere.

  “Hey, Mick, how you doin’?”

  The voice forced Mick to turn his head to the left. He did not want to do it. He did not want to see the owner of the voice. He was the main reason why Mick hated to come to Atlantic City. At another baccarat table, beside a pile of chips even bigger than the one Jacqueline Chasen was handling, sat Mick’s father, Harry Alexander O’Day, known to everyone as Buster. Every time Mick came to Atlantic City, Buster was at the baccarat or the craps table, dropping another twenty or thirty thousand as if it were Monopoly money, sneering drunkenly that there was lot more where it came from.

  There was too. Back in Jersey City, the northern factory town where Mick had been born, Buster ran the biggest numbers operation in the state. He had inherited it from his father and built it even bigger with help from the Mob. But Mick was never going to see any of the money. Neither was his mother. About a year after he was born, Barbara and Buster had gone their separate ways, and neither had ever explained why to him.

  Not that he had ever asked. He had been taught to despise this small, balding man with the mouth that twisted into a sneer even when he tried to smile. It had been easy because as far as Mick could see, there was nothing about Buster O’Day that anyone could like. All he had was money, piles of it that he waved in Mick’s face every time he saw him.

  “Hey, you wanna try your luck?” his father said, clutching a wad of $100 bills.

  “Nah. No thanks,” Mick said. “I’m here on business.”

  Buster sneered. Not even a try at a smile this time. “Yeah. I know. He’s playin’ craps.”

  Mick’s cousin Rose Gargan grabbed his arm. Her crotch-tight, feather-trimmed dress looked like it was going to split her in half. Mick still wasn’t used to seeing Rose Gargan wearing that kind of dress. Rose had been pretty when she was in high school. She did not seem so pretty now. Her red hair was twisted into something that looked like the strands of a mop. She had about three inches of lipstick on her mouth.

  “He’s down at least twenty thousand,” she said. “You better get him out of here.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Mick said.

  Mick knew exactly where to go, the craps table nearest the casino credit window. There sat three hundred pounds of Irish beef known as William P. O’Toole. Lately, he seemed to get fatter every time Mick looked at him. A bar girl was serving him a dark brown Scotch. Mick took it out of her hand and drank about half of it. He grinned and patted her sequined behind. “I’m a relative,” he said.

  Mick watched Bill O’Toole lose $2,000 on a pass nine. “Not goin’ too good,” Mick said.

  “It’ll come back,” Bill said. “It always comes back.” There seemed to be some truth to that. Uncle Bill had won amazing amounts of money at these tables last year. But nothing had gone right since September. This was the third time Mick had been told to ride to the rescue.

  “Maybe you ought to give it a rest,” Mick said. “Maybe the date’s against you.”

  “What day is it?”

  “March thirteenth.”

  “That’s my mother’s birthday, you idiot.”

  “Maybe you still ought to give it a rest,” Mick said as his uncle bet another $2,000 on a straight seven and lost so fast it sent needles of pain dancing through Mick’s forehead. He knew exactly what Uncle Bill got paid to be chief of the Paradise Beach Police Department, $26,000 a year. Mick also knew how much he got paid—$16,000. Uncle Bill had just blown a quarter of Mick’s salary.

&nbs
p; He was tempted to throw an arm lock on Uncle Bill and drag him out of the place. He was messing up what was left of the small but beautiful deal the Monahans and the O’Tooles and the McBrides had worked out in Paradise Beach. Even without Dan Monhan’s $5 million in bearer bonds in the cellar, it was a lot better than no deal at all.

  “Hey, Chief, how’s it goin’?”

  Joey Zaccaro inserted his swarthy fox face between Mick and his uncle. Joey’s eyes were straight from the zoo, glittering, wary, stupid. But his mouth smiled in a way that was almost human. According to the laws of New Jersey, Joey was not supposed to be allowed in the door of any casino in the state. He had Mob connections two pages long in the FBI printouts. But New Jersey tended to stop enforcing the laws after midnight in Atlantic City. Maybe even before midnight when a guy rolled as high as Joey Zip.

  “I’m goin’ lousy. How you goin’?” Uncle Bill said.

  “Couldn’t be lousier. I’m down forty.”

  “See what I mean?” Mick said. “It’s a bad-luck night.”

  “Who’s this?” Joey Zaccaro asked.

  “My nephew.”

  Joey introduced himself. It was the third time they had done this turn. Joey had a lousy memory for faces. He slapped Uncle Bill on the back. “When this guy’s hot, he takes the joint home. Never seen nothin’ like it.”

  Suddenly Joey’s eyes jumped from the craps table, where Uncle Bill was losing another $2,000 on a pass four, into the middle distance. “Jesus Christ!” Joey snarled.

  He hurtled away from them as if he were on wheels—across the carpet past the roulette tables and the draw-poker players to the baccarat table where Jacqueline Chasen was still playing with her mountain of chips. Without even breaking his stride, like a quarterback throwing a pass on the dead run, Joey belted her in the face.

  She flew about twenty feet and landed on her back under a draw-poker table. Joey Zaccaro went after her like a linebacker going after a fumble. She rolled away, out the other side of the table, and started running, total terror on her face. Nobody so much as moved. Nobody wanted to mess with Joey Zip even though he was obviously about to commit murder.

  As Joey passed the craps tables, Mick stuck out his arm and the Zipper stopped like a man running into a turnstile from the wrong side. His legs churned, his arms flailed, but he did not go anywhere. “Lemmy loose!” he screamed. “I wanna kill that broad. I wanna wipe her out.”

  Mick looked over his shoulder. Jacqueline Chasen was semi-collapsed against a pillar, sobbing hysterically. Security guards were lumbering toward them from three directions.

  “You better get the hell out of here,” Mick said to Joey Zaccaro. “We better do the same thing, Unk.”

  With a half nelson on the flailing, cursing Joey Zip, Mick guided a lurching Bill O’Toole across the block-long swath of gold carpet to the door. Buster O’Day watched from the baccarat table, his sneer practically neon across his puffy face.

  In the lobby Mick released Joey. “You got some muscles, kid,” Joey said. “You got any brains to go with them?”

  “A few,” Mick said.

  Joey had regained his self-control. “What the hell did that dame do to you?” Bill O’Toole asked.

  “Never mind,” Joey said. “Hope the old luck comes back next time.”

  “Same to you,” Bill said.

  “I never worry about luck,” Joey said. “When I need it, I make it.”

  “That proves you ain’t Irish,” Mick said.

  Mick drove home slowly, carefully. He always drove slowly and carefully when he had Uncle Bill in the car. He had taught Mick to drive. He was the closest thing to a father Mick had ever had in his life. At the same time he was not his father. Mick used to wish he could forget that. He used to wish there were no real son in Uncle Bill’s life, no family golden boy, no James Patrick O’Toole, known to everybody as Ace. Even before he became a marine pilot, he had been called Ace, because he did everything right: hot student, great athlete, devout altar boy. Jimmy had been shot down over Hanoi in his F-8 Crusader in 1969. Mick had joined the marines to avenge him.

  “How much did you lose tonight?” Mick asked.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Just interested.”

  “It’ll come back.”

  “Sure.”

  Silence until they were off the parkway, driving down the road through the pines. Lights were on in Trai’s house. Phac was up, stumbling around the kitchen, hungover probably. He drank hard during the winter. You could not blame him. He worked on the SS Enterprise, Paradise Beach’s biggest commercial fishing boat, owned by another of Mick’s uncles, the mayor of Paradise Beach, Desmond McBride.

  Crazy, the way a man gets stuck doing things. Phac had started out as a fisherman in Vietnam. The war turned him into a cop. When he makes it to the United States of America, land of freedom and opportunity, what happens? He goes back to fishing.

  “I’m down sixty grand at least,” Uncle Bill said as they roared over the causeway.

  A reddish glow was tinting the gray sky over the Atlantic. Out to the horizon the ocean was flecked with foam. The northeast wind was still churning down from the Pole. Mick wondered what Phac thought about that wind when the SS Enterprise dug its nose into the freezing swells. There was no wind like that in Vietnam. Over there, things cut to the bone in other ways.

  Phac did not deserve that wind. Trai deserved it. She should be out there on that icy, pitching bow, gaffing tuna, for what she had done in Vietnam. But Phac froze instead. That was the way the world turned. Women got away with things because they were women. Maybe Joey Zip had a reason for belting Jacqueline Chasen.

  “But I’m good for it. They know I’m good for it,” Uncle Bill said.

  “Sure.” Mick did not know what Bill was talking about. Did he think old Dan had another stash of bearer bonds somewhere?

  Whuuuuuh, moaned the northeast wind as Mick drove over the causeway that separated Paradise Beach from the rest of New Jersey. At the end a big sign urged everyone to vote for Walter Mondale for president. “Goddamn Democratic Party,” Uncle Bill said. “Collection of shit shoveling draft dodgers.”

  Uncle Bill talked that way a lot. He had a whole library full of books on Vietnam. He could tell you how Kennedy screwed it up and how Johnson screwed it up. He particularly hated some guy who had gotten a Pulitzer Prize for a book that claimed the South Vietnamese deserved to lose because they were corrupt. That idea would naturally blow the mind of anyone from Jersey City (or Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, and New Orleans, to name a mere handful of places where chicanery is as American as apple pie). Mick tried to tell Uncle Bill it was better not to think about Vietnam, but he never listened. Mick finally realized it was the only way Uncle Bill could feel close to Jimmy.

  Mick turned into Delaware Avenue. All the shore towns had named their streets Atlantic City style. Marie O’Toole opened the door as they came up the steps. She had obviously been awake most of the night. Exhaustion had sunk deep lines into her once pretty face.

  “Jesus Christ,” Marie said. “I can’t stand much more of this.”

  “I blew another twenty,” Bill O’Toole said. Mick sensed Uncle Bill enjoyed making this announcement.

  “That makes sixty thousand dollars!” Marie screamed. “Where are we gonna get sixty thousand dollars? Daddy can’t do anything for you anymore. Do you expect him to mortgage his house?”

  “There’s lots of ways to make sixty grand,” Bill O’Toole snarled. “Lots of ways that don’t have anything to do with kissing your father’s ass. So why don’t you shut your goddamn mouth for once in your life?”

  “I’ll shut my mouth when you tell me what happened to your wonderful connections in the federal attorney’s office who didn’t pick up a phone when those bastards were on their way down here to grab those bonds.”

  “I told you a hundred times they weren’t from New Jersey. They came direct from Washington, D.C.,” Bill roared.<
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  Most of the time Mick tried not to think about the arguments in the family. Since they’d lost the bonds, Uncle Bill had taken a hate to Sunny Dan Monahan. Bill had always hated Desmond McBride and his wife. They had made a lot of money from their fishing business and took trips to Ireland and Florida and Bermuda and were always talking about their son Leo, who was the right testicle of their district’s congressman, the Honorable James Mullen, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, no less, and one of Senator Ted Kennedy’s playpals.

  Leo still wanted Mick to sue the Marine Corps for giving him a dishonorable discharge. He wanted to smear the Corps and turn Mick into a media hero. Leo was a liberal asshole.

  Was Uncle Bill a conservative asshole? Was his brother-in-law Desmond McBride with his shamrocks and leprechauns and his blathering about the ould sod an even bigger asshole? Mick went back to the squad car trying to avoid answering these questions.

  HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

  In Mick’s squad car, the radio was squawking. Tom Brannigan was getting pretty upset. He had an emergency call from Leeds Point and Yummy O’Keefe had gone back to his snooze behind the high school. Mick took over and headed out to the Point. It was unusual to have anyone in those houses during the winter.

  The call was from Number 13, at the very tip of the Point. That house belonged to Jacqueline Chasen’s mother. But she had not lived there for years. She made a nice dollar renting it in the summer and usually closed it for the winter. Mick had not noticed any signs of activity around the place during his midnight house checks. Whoever was there must be living a quiet life.