The Accidental Agent

by Andrew Rosenheim

  The Whispering Gallery has a magical effect that also demonstrates a scientific principle. The room is designed in the form of an ellipsoid and has two arch-shaped dishes at either end that serve as points of focus. This means that if you whisper directly into one dish, your voice will travel across the room to the other focal point, and will be heard – and heard only – by the listener standing in front of the other dish.

  He gave himself a mental kick. Kalvin had been talking all right, but not to himself.

  But where was the other participant in the dialogue? He moved to the gallery’s entrance and stared at the other disc of glass, at the far end to his right. Whoever had been there to receive Kalvin’s words was gone. A little girl and her mother were standing on that platform; at what had been Kalvin’s end her father stood, whispering. No adult had come out of the entrance where Nessheim had been standing; he (or she) wouldn’t have gone to Kalvin’s end, in case they were seen together – disguising their conversation must be the whole point of this weird exercise. Which left one entrance at the far end.

  Going through it quickly Nessheim found himself in a small hallway, with a staircase leading to the museum’s upper floor. A corridor led back to the main Exhibition Hall. He walked along it, and stood in a doorway a few steps up from the Hall. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. For all the schoolchildren, there were plenty of adults. But since Kalvin had turned into the museum’s interior recesses, wouldn’t his listener have moved as far as possible from him?

  Nessheim half-ran to the entrance, nearly bowling over two women with shopping bags, just avoiding treading on a toddler who came up to his knees. Exhaling apologies, he slipped outside and stared out through the evening’s darkening gloom at the vast parking lot. It was lit dimly by ancient standing lamps, relics from the Fair rewired to use electricity and spaced at regular intervals between the parking spaces. They provided the only source of brightness in the grey: a woman walking to her car was suddenly revealed to be wearing a yellow coat. And there was a man, in a midnight-blue Chesterfield … Nessheim stared hard. Could it be?

  He ran down the front steps of the museum, desperate not to lose sight of the retreating figure. Nessheim prayed that he didn’t have a car here; there would be no way he could follow him. But the man was still walking, and each time he passed a lamp Nessheim drew closer, until he was confident that it was the same Chesterfield he had first spotted that morning, topped again by a homburg hat.

  Coincidence? Never, thought Nessheim, increasing his pace. As Guttman had told him many times, it was better to be ‘paranoid’, in the newfangled language of these new doctors of the mind, than to be complacent about unexpected connections.

  The Chesterfield was moving fast, crossing Stony Island Avenue and heading for the tunnel that took 57th Street underneath the tracks. Nessheim struggled to keep up, but there were no lights on this block of the Inner Drive.

  Underneath the tracks a solitary bulb lit the entrance to the station. He saw the Chesterfield turn and enter through the iron turnstiles. Nessheim stopped at the edge of the tunnel, and gave it twenty seconds. Then he moved forward quickly, buying his ticket from a visor-capped man behind a grilled window. He asked for a round trip to Randolph Street and paid his fifteen cents, then rushed up the stairs just in time, for a train was coming in.

  A couple of doors opened and a few people got out, while the conductor hooked an arm on an opening door from inside the coach and swung out over the platform, scanning it in both directions. There was no sign of the Chesterfield, and Nessheim scooted back to the last car, just before the door slid shut and the conductor blew his whistle.

  He tried to scan the occupants of the compartment casually; it was less than half-full and he could see all the passengers. Still no sign of Chesterfield. Nessheim sat down by the door on one of the cane-covered reversible seats as the train started up again. It was cold in the car, helped by the IC’s famous 60:40 air conditioning: sixty miles an hour and forty open windows meant the train made its own cooling system, which worked even in the dripping heat of a Chicago summer.

  A copy of the Chicago Herald American sat next to him on the seat, and he picked it up and pretended to read, barely taking in the headline, which seemed a classic even for that paper: ‘Mother of 14 Kids Kills Father of 9 in Police Station’.

  He was trying to figure out what was going on. Who was this guy? He’d been following Nessheim, of that he was pretty sure, but why then meet with Kalvin? Kalvin was a Jew – why would he be helping the Nazis?

  The train stopped at 53rd and Nessheim didn’t get up, figuring Chesterfield wouldn’t take the IC for one short stop. At 47th he did stand up and went to the door and peered out of its window just in case, but only an old Negro lady got off. The next stop was 23rd Street, so he flicked through the paper, unwilling to look into the next car. The mid-term elections had been two days before, and Roosevelt’s Democrats had lost forty-five seats in the House, yet just managed to hang on to a majority. In the South-Western Pacific fierce fighting continued on Guadalcanal, but Carlson’s raiders, a unit of marines, had wiped out a Japanese garrison on Little Makin Island. Rommel was in retreat in the sands of Western Egypt, and had lost 600 planes and 160 tanks to the British Army. It was day seventy-three of the siege of Stalingrad. And here I am, thought Nessheim wearily, playing spies and taking the IC downtown.

  At 23rd Street no one disembarked. Heading downtown again, the train curved on to an inside track and he could see the tall buildings of the Loop looming toy-like against the northern sky.

  Then Roosevelt Road, and 14th Street, where buildings became commercial – warehouses, small factories, stores. Chesterfield must be going all the way downtown, thought Nessheim, since everybody else was. So it was fortunate that Nessheim stuck his head out of the window at Van Buren, since he would never otherwise have seen the man emerge from the front car. Without a backward glance, thank God, since Nessheim had to leave the train and move conspicuously fast to keep up.

  At the subterranean shelter of the waiting room, Nessheim stopped for a moment, anxious not to climb the stairs to Michigan Avenue and find himself standing next to the man. He counted slowly to ten, then went up, in time to see his target heading across the avenue and proceeding along Van Buren Street. The man crossed under the busy L tracks that ran north and south over Wabash. At State he turned north and walked up to Jackson before turning left again. He seemed oblivious to the possibility of being followed – almost too much so, and Nessheim slowed his own pace.

  He was right, since when Nessheim turned the corner, he saw him less than a hundred feet ahead, ostentatiously staring at a store window. Nessheim turned on a dime and waited around the corner of the building for over a minute; when he came round into Dearborn again he saw Chesterfield far ahead, striding towards Adams Street, passing the massive brick Monadnock Building, then turning left on Adams. Nessheim followed, starting to feel nervous, since this was highly familiar territory to him, and the last thing he needed was to run into someone he knew.

  Wherever this guy was going, he was doing it in a roundabout way. It suggested either that he’d been well trained or that he was new to the city. Nessheim was wondering which when he turned the corner on to Adams and found the likely answer. It was one he would never have expected; he watched with disbelief as Chesterfield entered the revolving doors of 105 West Adams Street. Among its many occupants were the headquarters of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI.

  He ignored the questions multiplying in his mind and this time sprinted towards the building, daring this new connection to be untrue. He hit the brass-lined revolving door at speed, accelerating the outward journey of a businessman who had been calmly leaving on his way home. ‘Hey,’ the man shouted as he was sent flying on to the sidewalk by the swinging door. Nessheim ignored him and raced towards the bank of elevators on the left side of the mezzanine.

  There were no elevators waiting and he went from one to the other, checking the floor
number that clicked floor by floor in little windows to the side of each shaft. Most of the cars were high up in the building, which was over forty storeys. But one was on twelve and still ascending. It must be Chesterfield’s. Nessheim had no way of knowing who else was in the elevator car, but it wouldn’t be full at this time of day – people would be going down, leaving work, rather than going up. The car stopped at sixteen, long enough to mean someone was getting off. Then it ascended again until it reached the nineteenth floor.

  Bingo, thought Nessheim; the nineteenth was where he had started out with the Bureau, little more than an errand boy until given a chance by the SAC Melvin Purvis to become an agent.

  He wanted to go up himself to the nineteenth floor, and find out who the guy was. But he couldn’t – Guttman had been explicit that this operation was off the books. If he went upstairs, chances were good that he would run into the current SAC – Nelson, a hard nut who had cleared the Chicago Field Office of agents hired by his predecessor. Nessheim would have been one of them, sent like the others ‘to Butte’ in the parlance of the Bureau, had not Guttman arrived to recruit him.

  ‘Jimmy,’ a hoarse voice cried. No one called him that any more; when he turned round he saw Lenny, the one-armed owner of the kiosk in the building’s lobby. Lenny was gregarious and knew everybody – he could tell you the condition of the sick cat owned by Mrs Fergus who worked on the third floor.

  ‘Still here, huh?’ Nessheim answered. ‘What happened to Florida?’

  Lenny laughed. ‘I keep losing the big hands. What about you? I haven’t seen you for ages.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been around.’

  ‘Not here you ain’t. You still with the Feds?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nah, just visiting.’

  ‘Well, visit some more.

  ‘Say, Lenny, did you just see a guy come through? Young-looking, wearing a blue Chesterfield.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw him. Nice coat.’

  ‘Who’s he work for?’

  ‘Beats me. Never seen him before.’

  7

  NESSHEIM WENT OUTSIDE, where the sidewalks were crowded with people leaving work. He killed time walking along LaSalle Street towards the Corn Exchange, which sat hunkered down at one end like a squat bulky guardian of America’s agricultural future. He turned, moseying around on State, absent-mindedly checking out the window displays at Carson Pirie Scott and Marshall Field’s while he tried to figure out what he had uncovered.

  The Chesterfield guy was with the Bureau, but what did that mean? That Kalvin was an informant? If so, why hadn’t Guttman told him? Lenny hadn’t recognised Chesterfield, which could only mean the guy hadn’t been in the building before – Lenny didn’t miss a trick. So was he brand new here? Sent to Chicago to run Kalvin? Or was he in town for the one weird meeting in the Museum of Science and Industry? In which case, what did Kalvin know that was important enough to summon a Special Agent?

  He got himself so immersed in questions and possibilities that he ended up being late for his meeting with Tatie, just two blocks away at the Palmer House. Only five minutes late, but that would be enough to prickle Tatie.

  Eloise Tate, middle name unknown, was probably in her late forties now, nearly twenty years older than Nessheim, and with a long-standing ability to make him feel all of fifteen years old. Like everybody else, he’d always been a little scared of her, though she’d always been nice to him. In his first year at the Bureau, when he’d been little more than a glorified gopher for Purvis, and the agents ignored him and he had no friends at work, he’d come down with flu so bad he couldn’t even make it to a phone to call in sick. Tatie had come to his boarding house, bringing him soup. None of the older guys had ever let him forget it, though what they didn’t know is that she’d come back every evening after work. Young as he was, it hadn’t even occurred to Nessheim that Tatie could be sweet on him.

  He went through the Wabash entrance to the hotel, then through reception to the Grand Lounge. He stood at the top of the short staircase and stared at the hotel’s famous showpiece. The two-storey gilded room was furnished like Louis XVI’s salon, with rich patterned carpet on the floor, Tiffany 24-carat gold chandeliers, and an array of walnut and maple tables, plush sofas, and armchairs padded with thick velvet. The ceiling was especially famous, a series of frescoes created by a Frenchman brought in at unprecedented expense in the 1920s. He had depicted the most famous figures of Greek mythology in lustrous blues, reds, and gold, with the nude figure of Venus ascending as a centrepiece. It was trumpeted as an American rival to the Sistine Chapel; there had never been anything modest about Chicago.

  Nessheim spotted Tatie at a corner table, sitting stiffly on a ruby-red velvet chair. She was wearing a neat wool jacket and a pleated skirt, both charcoal grey, and though fashionable they had the unintended effect of making her look much older. He felt as though he was having drinks with a country relative, come to the big city to keep an eye on the family’s prodigal son.

  He shook her hand awkwardly since she stayed seated. Apologising for being late, he pulled up another chair and sat across the little pie-shaped table. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked.

  ‘Just some tea, please.’ So he ordered that and little sandwiches that came on a three-plated affair, the contraption held together by a centring rod with a handle that the waiter swung with practised ease. Nessheim hated to think what this was going to cost him.

  He said, ‘It’s nice to see you again. I thought you’d gone to Washington.’

  She shook her head. ‘They offered me a post there, restructuring the Records department. I’d have been reporting directly to Louis B. Nichols.’

  ‘That’s a big job,’ said Nessheim politely. ‘But I guess I’ve always thought of you as part and parcel of this place.’

  ‘You and everybody else. Sometimes I feel I’m just part of the furniture. And almost as dusty.’ She sighed wistfully, and suddenly Nessheim saw that she was becoming a lonely old maid. He was startled by this thought. She said with an artificial brightness, ‘Still, my friends are all here. I’d like to think you were one of them.’

  ‘Of course, Tatie.’ But he felt embarrassed. Friendship was not how he would have described their relationship. She’d been like that older sister to him – scolding, tough, but giving out an underlying sense of affection. That wasn’t the same as friends.

  ‘I’m sorry you couldn’t have dinner with me,’ she said. There was something pathetic about her voice.

  ‘So am I,’ said Nessheim, trying to sound as though he meant it. He ploughed on, thinking how forced he sounded as he explained that he had to see someone in Hyde Park that evening.

  Tatie picked up her pack of cigarettes from the table and shook it until one stuck its neck out, then offered it to Nessheim. He shook his head, and she said, ‘Still clean then, Jim?’

  He shrugged. He had smoked one cigarette when he turned sixteen and promptly puked behind the bakery where his girlfriend worked in Bremen, Wisconsin.

  ‘My clean-living Mr Nessheim,’ said Tatie, but there was no affection in her voice.

  ‘I wanted your help on something,’ he said, since their small talk was going nowhere.

  ‘Shoot,’ she said.

  ‘It’s about the German-American Bund. It’s supposed to be disbanded, but I wonder if there’s been any activity still here in Chicago. Could you check the file for me?’

  ‘Of course, but I think you’re right – it’s defunct.’

  ‘And could you check two names for me? Just in case they’re still around?’ He passed her a piece of paper. Schultz the Bund leader in New York was dead – of natural causes while he served his time in Sing Sing. Beringer, on the other hand, had been alive and well when last seen by Nessheim, and there was Alex Burmeister to consider, husband of Nessheim’s high-school girlfriend and once a prominent figure in the Wisconsin Bund.

  ‘And there’s something else – if I wanted to know if somebody was working in the Field Office, how
would I best go about it?’

  ‘You know their name?’

  ‘That’s the thing – I don’t.’

  ‘How about age?’

  ‘Young, younger than me, I’d say. Mid-twenties. Nice-looking fella, kind of tall, thin build, bordering on skinny.’

  ‘There would be a large number of candidates, Jim. Everybody looks young to me these days, and there are a lot of new recruits. Would you recognise him if you saw him again?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I would. But I wouldn’t want him to see me, if you get my drift.’

  ‘I got that, thanks, Jim,’ she said sharply. She was prickly about even the remotest hint of condescension. ‘Your best bet would be the mug book.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘We call it the mug book. It’s got mugshots of every employee in the office, along with their personal details. They’re all in one big book – it’s like a photo album. That way you don’t have to go look at each individual file. The SAC has one, and so does Miss Clory.’

  ‘She’s still there?’

  ‘Agnes soldiers on,’ Tatie said drily. Miss Clory was an ancient spinster who looked after payroll and small personnel matters – if you lost your wallet Miss Clory helped you get fixed up with a new licence and social security card (though if you lost your badge there wasn’t much she could do – usually you got fired). Tatie seemed to recognise that one day not too far off, people like Nessheim would be asking the same question about her.

  ‘This mug book, do you have one?’

  She shook her head. ‘But I can get access to it easily enough.’ There wasn’t much Tatie didn’t know or couldn’t find out in the Field Office. Tatie added, ‘This sounds pretty mysterious. Is it to do with Harry Guttman’s business?’