Take No Prisoners Read Online Free PDF Page B

Art Deco in places – but overall I found the movie unsatisfying and often tedious. Where were Chips and Ginger? The few Brits who had speaking parts were either villains of the stupidest sort or wise collaborators who might as well have been Germans themselves. And where was all the poignancy of watching stiff-upper-lip heroes who didn't know that, despite all their courage and dedication, they were doomed to be on the losing side, whatever their temporary triumphs? Where was all the antiquated slang I had come to love?
    I glanced around me as the lights came up. So far as I could tell, none of the other regulars had found the movie in any way less enjoyable than usual – I seemed to be the only one to have noticed the very different character of this piece from our customary fare. Well, there had been other dreary movies in the Rupolo's seemingly neverending season devoted to World War II, and I supposed it was about time that the owner showed one that presented the other side of the story, as it were.
    I settled back to watch the trailer for the movie that was showing in the evenings all this week. It was called Robotic Cop Two , and if the trailer was anything to go by it involved a machine taking the place of a cop and shooting everything and everybody in sight for a solid two hours. I decided not to bother watching it even when it came onto tv.
    The second feature that afternoon was called The Rising Sun Shall Never Set , and at last we seemed to be back in familiar prisoner-of-war territory. I relaxed briefly in my seat, luxuriating in the sensation of having come home, but that happy state did not last long. The prisoners-of-war proved to be not Britishers incarcerated somewhere in Germany but Japanese being held in one of the concentration camps that the traitor Roosevelt established in this country. Aside from that the plot was fairly routine, following the lines I had come to expect from my earlier viewing, although with the additional complication that Japanese escapees had a tougher time of it, because of their distinctively non-American appearance, as they tried to make their way across country to join their comrades or make contact with the Resistance. The gimmick of the movie – which for all I know may have been historically based – was that the intelligent Japs got their imbecilic guards, mainly niggers, so involved in learning samurai skills that they relaxed the actual business of guarding. The close of the movie saw the liberation of the camp and a general rejoicing over the assassination of the hated Roosevelt.
    My mind was in something of a ferment as I wandered home, clutching one of Mr. Perkins's roast beef and Swiss sandwiches with "the works." Was it possible that sometime during the past week the cops had quietly warned the Rupolo's owner to alter his ways or be busted for sedition? Or was it not more likely that he'd simply had a change of heart? Or maybe he'd run out of movies of the other sort and, rather than start repeating himself, he'd decided to move on to more realistic dramas? Or had he sold the business, and the new owner ...? There were endless possible reasons for the double bill I'd just witnessed, but none of them seemed entirely plausible to me.
    I was still nagging away at the problem as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. Just as I put the key in the lock I was startled by a bellow from behind Mrs. Bellis's door.
    "Your maw called," she yelled. "You gotta call her back, you fucker."
    I paused. For Mrs. Bellis to speak to me at all was unprecedented. For her to give me a phone message was something I'd never considered outside the bounds of fantasy. Normally, if she answered the phone and it was for me she just slammed the receiver back on its hook and swore – I'd heard her do exactly this several times. Mom must have been extremely firm in her instructions that I was to be informed.
    The key still in my hand, I retreated down the stairs and dialed the operator. In a few