her own chutzpah amazes her.
“On the contrary, honey, I don’t want a damn thing. It’s your people, Army Intelligence, who want something from us. I’m just making sure you understand who’s in charge, and it ain’t you.”
The colonel sighs and raises pacifying hands. He has no patience for this posturing, but neither does he have the force to end it. “Maybe we should get to the point. Schulterman, the US Army is planning an action—I won’t say where or when—but there is a person in the . . . let’s say, target area . . . who may be of some use to Army Intelligence. Agent Bayswater, perhaps you’d like to explain your end of it.”
Bayswater stares at Rainy. It is a hard, aggressive stare, an intimidating stare, no doubt a stare he has used to cow many a criminal suspect. Rainy is worried, but she is not intimidated by Agent Bayswater, and she lets him know it by returning his gaze with a blank, emotionless expression.
Finally, the FBI man sighs, shrugs his shoulders, and mutters, “Broads in the army. You can keep ’em. It’ll never happen in the FBI; I can promise you that.”
“A woman might have gotten to the point by now, rather than playing games,” Rainy snaps.
Bayswater snorts a derisive laugh. “A real woman would still be gossiping; I don’t know what you are, honey. But okay, I’ve got things to do, and maybe you do too. So here it is. We’ve tried working out deals to get help from the crime bosses. A lot of ’em have connections overseas, and in addition to that they could help with labor troubles on the docks. But all any of them wants is for Lucky to be let out of jail, and that ain’t gonna happen.”
“He means Lucky Luciano,” Corelli explains unnecessarily. Charles “Lucky” Luciano is the boss of all bosses in New York crime. He is in prison for “pandering” which is a polite way of saying he ran a prostitution ring, along with gambling, protection rackets, union rackets and assorted other profitable enterprises.
“Luciano is in a hole in Dannemora and he ain’t getting out, but that’s all the mob wants, all it says it wants anyway. Give us Luciano and we’ll be good, patriotic Americans and help out the war effort. That’s their demand, and they won’t budge.”
Corelli picks up the narrative. “The target area is a place where certain members of New York criminal gangs have useful contacts. Contacts who may provide us with intelligence on German positions.”
“I see,” Rainy says, and she does. Obviously the target is Italy or perhaps one of its islands, Sicily or Sardinia. It was not hard to look at a map and see that the next move for US and Allied forces in Tunisia might be some portion of Italy. Knocking Italy out of the war would be very helpful.
“I doubt very much that you do see, honey,” Bayswater says.
Rainy’s pride flares and she very nearly becomes indiscreet, but she reins it in. Barely. “You believe my father has connections to organized crime. You believe he can introduce me to someone in the organization who wants something other than freedom for Lucky Luciano. You believe this person has connections in Sicily or Sardinia or wherever in Italy that would be helpful. You want my father to make a connection and for me to approach this person with a suggestion or at least pave the way for someone more senior to have that conversation.”
This leaves the FBI man open-mouthed and temporarily flummoxed. His mouth closes with an audible click. But he recovers quickly. “We don’t want a damned thing, the army wants it, and we are just making sure you don’t say or do something you shouldn’t. And we want a full report on whatever goes on.”
“I don’t take orders from the FBI.”
“You damn well will take orders from me, sister.”
He’s moved from honey to sister. Progress, of a sort. “No. And I will not be threatened either.”
“How about if I arrange to put your old man in the clink?”
“Then you’ll report back to your superiors that you jailed a small-time numbers runner and blew the assignment, which I would guess was to render support to Colonel Corelli.”
“Jesus!” the FBI agent explodes in disgust. He can no longer remain seated but jumps up, nearly knocking his chair over. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Rainy is about to tell him when Corelli intervenes. “She’s a soldier and under military law, not civilian law, so how about we all calm down? What do you say?” He shakes his head in irritation mixed with amusement. “Sergeant, I am not going to order you to take this on. But as I understand it, there’s a lesser boss, there’s a term for it—”
“A capo,” Agent Bayswater says, still glaring at Rainy. “Or underboss.”
“Underboss. Le mot juste. An underboss named Vito Camporeale. He’s got family connections in . . . the target area. And he has a son named Francisco—Cisco they call him—right here in New York. Cisco has gotten himself into a heap of trouble.”
Bayswater says, “Racketeering, pandering, pornography, and loansharking. Only, Cisco screwed up and got overly ambitious. He tried to take over a block that belongs to a colored gang up in Harlem. But see, there’s a peace deal between the Wops and the coons, and the Five Families don’t want a war with the coons right now, what with making money hand over fist on the docks and off drunk soldiers. Cisco shot a colored boy who was connected, see, and now it’s blood for blood.”
The full truth begins to dawn on Rainy. “You’re going to offer to get Cisco to . . . to a safe place. And you want me to get my father to introduce me to Camporeale and—”
“Vito the Sack, they call him.” Bayswater now comes close. He puts his hands on the back of Rainy’s chair, leans down so she can feel his breath on the side of her neck. “Because when a fellow displeases him, see, he likes to take a razor and swipe, swipe, the man’s not a man anymore, if you take my meaning.”
Without turning to face him, Rainy repeats, “You want me to get my father to introduce me to Vito the Sack and get him to help us in . . . the target area. In exchange, we’ll save his son.”
Bayswater is taken aback by her calm. She feels him release his grip on her seat back. Of course her calm is mostly an act because Rainy’s mind is screaming with complications and personal fears, the foremost of which is confronting her father with this. She wrote to him months earlier to let him know that she knows about his other activities. But since coming home on leave she and her father have never mentioned it. Forcing him to face it? To face the fact that his activities have now ensnared his daughter? That feels very, very hard to Rainy.
On the other hand, part of Rainy is excited. The part of her that wants to contribute something to destroying the monster Hitler. She is a mere buck sergeant, one of hundreds of thousands of such in the US Army, but she’s being offered an assignment that could really amount to something. She could help to save the lives of GIs like those she met in Tunisia. She has fond memories of solid, reliable Dain Sticklin and charming Jack Stafford, and she was amazed—and just a little scared—by Rio Richlin.
Since the desperate combat in the desert, that young woman, Rio, has insinuated herself into Rainy’s mind. The mix of freckle-faced naiveté and savage Amazon brutality has affected Rainy’s worldview, has shown her a glimpse of a future in which ideas of masculinity and femininity could be utterly transformed. There is a revolution in Rio Richlin (who would no doubt snort derisively at such a notion). All over the country women are going into factories and doing jobs previously reserved for men only. All over the world clever women—and Rainy knows herself to be in this category—are contributing their intelligence and insight to the war effort. But women have always worked, if not as shipfitters and aircraft mechanics, then as maids and nurses and teachers. And there are examples going back to the time of the Romans of women bright and determined enough to wield real power, though often it was from behind the scenes.
But Rio, and women like her, are intruding in an area that has always been reserved to men: Rio is a warrior. She and others like her have