The Accidental Agent

by Andrew Rosenheim

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Well, either that’s a gun in your armpit or you’re getting overexcited.’

  He laughed despite himself. Stacey said, ‘I didn’t know metallurgists were dangerous.’

  ‘It’s a regulation. I have no choice.’

  ‘A regulation for life? You keep saying you resigned.’

  He sighed; she was penetratingly persistent. ‘I don’t suppose if I asked you to leave it alone, you would?’

  ‘That’s about the third “leave it alone” in a half an hour, Nessheim. Comes a point when a girl wants in on something.’

  ‘I would if I could,’ he said, and kissed her hard enough that she couldn’t reply.

  The Fermis were living on Woodlawn Avenue between 55th and 56th. Two doors down, a fraternity occupied a double-sized mansion, and a banner above the front door proclaimed Open House for new pledges. Despite the November cold, a bunch of guys stood out on the large porch, warmed by big mugs of beer they carried in their hands. They hooted amiably as Nessheim and Stacey went past, and Nessheim waved like a fellow player of frat games.

  ‘What do they want?’ asked Stacey, taking his arm.

  ‘Beats me. Even with your coat on you seem to attract masculine attention.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said freely. ‘I suppose you were in a fraternity at Northwestern.’

  ‘Not on your life.’ He could have been; half the football team had been Dekes, but he hadn’t wanted to join. He figured that you could be a football player, affable, a regular guy, yet still want to preserve something of yourself that fraternities were designed to crush. He was no maverick, but he was not a natural joiner either.

  The Fermi place was a tall three-storey red-brick house squeezed into the row, which Stacey said the Fermis were renting from a businessman who’d gone to Washington for war work. Nessheim wasn’t sure what to expect – a decorous affair, most likely, stiff and European, with little booze or none, high-flown conversations and a sense of relief when he and Stacey could leave.

  Laura Fermi opened the front door, in a black party dress and with flour on her hands. She smiled shyly at Nessheim, then beamed when she saw Stacey. They hugged so hard that flour fell like fairy dust from Laura’s fingers. She introduced them to her two children, who were already dressed in their pyjamas and shook hands with a grave European formality. ‘Off to bed now,’ said Laura with false sternness. She showed Nessheim where to put their coats in the front closet, and Stacey went with her towards the kitchen, over Laura’s protestations.

  The living room was large and square with a high ceiling, and the furniture had been pushed back to the perimeter to let people stand freely in the middle of the room. At the far end Fermi was presiding over a long table that held empty glasses, bottles of ginger ale, some cartons of apple juice and a couple of soda siphons. He was talking to the other guests – Nessheim recognised Szilard, and next to him Kalvin and Knuth, the workshop man.

  As he joined them Fermi said, ‘Maybe you can help.’

  Kalvin said, ‘Does your expertise extend to the making of punch?’

  ‘I’d say I had experience more than expertise. What have you got there?’

  In the punch bowl there was a large block of ice but no liquid. Fermi reached under the table and brought up two bottles of gin. ‘Is this enough?’ he asked doubtfully.

  ‘Should be to start,’ said Nessheim. ‘Unless you want people carried out of here on stretchers.’

  Fermi laughed. ‘But what shall I mix it with?’

  Nessheim surveyed the table. ‘Not ginger ale,’ he said. ‘I’d put soda water in to make it fizzy. But you want some flavour too.’ He picked up a small bottle of grenadine. ‘This will do – it will sweeten it and make it look pretty.’

  ‘Could I beg you to do the mixing for me?’

  ‘Why not?’ He began making the punch while Fermi looked on as if this were a novel experiment. Szilard and Kalvin drew closer. They looked like a comedy duo: Kalvin tall and balding; Szilard short and stocky, with a face like a frog, and hair brushed back above a high forehead.

  Szilard said amiably, ‘May I ask where you acquired this set of skills, Mr Nessheim?’

  Kalvin said, ‘I believe he means, where were you educated?’

  ‘Northwestern. It’s the other university in town.’

  ‘Is it good?’ asked Szilard.

  ‘I think most would say it’s the Second City’s second college. Academically, at least. But a powerhouse when it comes to parties.’

  Fermi laughed. ‘His degree is not in parties, I assure you.’

  ‘I assume you are an engineer,’ Kalvin said. ‘Civil or structural?’

  ‘Civil,’ said Nessheim. ‘My particular interest is in bridges.’

  ‘Any particular kind of bridge?’ asked Kalvin.

  ‘Cable-span bridges.’ This seemed to satisfy Kalvin, and Nessheim thanked God for his old room-mate Reissmuller, an engineering student who talked bridges non-stop, sometimes even in his sleep.

  More people had come by now, and Laura Fermi came out of the kitchen with her apron still on, followed by Stacey. They were carrying trays of sandwiches, and moved around the room, offering them to the guests. Reaching Nessheim, Stacey declared, ‘Eat up, pal.’

  Szilard inspected the offerings. ‘Egg?’ he asked.

  ‘Si,’ said Stacey with a smile.

  Szilard took one. Kalvin was staring at Stacey, then realised she was waiting for him so he took a sandwich as well. When Laura moved on, Kalvin said, ‘Is that the Fermis’ maid?’

  Szilard shrugged to show he didn’t know.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Nessheim.

  ‘If I were Mrs Fermi I don’t think I should like to have her in the house,’ said Kalvin. Szilard laughed, and Nessheim tried to laugh as well.

  The room was filling up, and Nessheim found himself separated from Kalvin and Szilard, and next to the drinks table where Fermi was conferring with his wife and Stacey. He turned to Nessheim. ‘We think we should have some music. I know Americans like to dance.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ said Nessheim.

  Laura Fermi said, ‘There is a problem. Enrico has bought a new record player. Excellent in every way.’

  ‘But …?’

  ‘We have no records. They are in boxes back in New York.’

  Fermi gave a sad smile. ‘I blame my wife, she blames me. Either way, we have no music to play.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Stacey. ‘We can listen to the radio. There’s lots of music on a Saturday night.’

  Laura Fermi looked downcast. ‘We have no radio now. They took it away – just yesterday.’

  ‘What do you mean? Who took it away?’

  ‘The authorities.’ She didn’t look at Nessheim. ‘It was a Capehart and had shortwave, and they said we couldn’t be trusted not to listen to broadcasts from overseas.’

  ‘Like where?’ Stacey was incredulous.

  ‘Italy. Germany. I suppose almost anywhere in Europe.’

  ‘But that’s moronic. I can listen to the same things.’

  ‘Ah, but you are not a registered alien.’ She sounded almost apologetic; there was none of her husband’s asperity in her voice, just the resigned sound of someone being bullied who knew there was nothing they could do about it.

  Stacey looked at Nessheim and he could see she was furious. He wanted to say it had nothing to do with him, but then he had a thought. ‘Hang on two secs. I don’t live far away – only a block and a half. I’ve got lots of records. Let me go get them.’

  Laura Fermi said, ‘No, it is too much trouble –’

  ‘Hurry up,’ Stacey said, cutting in. ‘It’s the least you can do.’

  So he went outside, passing half a dozen new guests to the party, including the Canadian physicist Zinn, who had cleaned up any graphite traces from his hands and wore a spiffy blue double-breasted suit. His wife had also come, as well as several younger women with bright lipsticked mouths, excited
to see the home of their husbands’ fabled boss.

  Outside it was starting to spit with rain, and the frat-house boys had all gone inside. Nessheim hurried up to 56th Street and went east a block. As he entered the courtyard of his apartment block on Kimbark he looked ahead to his living-room window at the far end, where he always left the table lamp on by the sofa – just enough to suggest someone was home without celebrating the fact. Lately he had been vigilant about this.

  His apartment windows were completely dark.

  Maybe the light bulb blew, he thought, but it sounded weak even to the hopeful side of his nature.

  He stopped halfway down the courtyard by a side entrance to the wing that formed one side of the courtyard’s U, watching his windows. They remained black, lifeless. He tried to think what he should do – move forward naturally, and maybe get a bullet in the head? Go back to the alley and come in through the kitchen? Thank God he’d paid no attention to Stacey – at least he had his gun.

  In the event he concocted a compromise. He took his felt fedora off, thinking that if he’d been watched earlier, this might now disguise him. He moved silently across the back half of the courtyard to his entrance, and gently opened the ground-floor door. Once inside the tiny atrium he pressed the little black button, no bigger than a courtesan’s mole, for his apartment. This would tell anyone inside his place that it was a stranger calling, looking for Nessheim. Then he pushed the buzzer of the apartment two floors above, that of the Communist philosophy professor who had previously rented Nessheim’s apartment before moving upstairs. As he’d hoped, the door clicked and gave way against his pressing hand.

  He moved through the ground-floor hallway, past the janitor’s door, and went quickly but quietly up the stairs two at a time. On the landing he stopped. In the thin glow of the hallway light his door looked undisturbed. Above him he heard the Professor’s door open, and a thin voice called out, ‘Who’s there?’

  He went up another half-landing and said, in a low quiet voice, ‘Sorry, I pressed the wrong buzzer. I’m seeing my friend down here.’

  The Professor did not reply, but Nessheim heard him go back into his apartment. He came back down again and stood close to his own door, listening. He couldn’t hear a thing from inside, just the muddled sounds of movement in the other apartments, the clank of a radiator taking a break, the high pitch of water being run through the pipes.

  He took his keys out of his pocket and put them in his left hand, while his right extracted his pistol from the holster inside his jacket. He got the key into the lock with his left hand and slowly turned it, simultaneously pushing the door with his right foot. The door swung open, creaking like the effects in a hokey ghost story. He stayed back for a moment, trying to adjust his eyes to the dark interior of his apartment, knowing that if he stepped forward he would be framed by the light of the hallway.

  He finally stepped forward, keeping the swung-open door between himself and the hallway leading to the back of the apartment. He pointed his weapon towards the living room in front, then in one quick movement hit the light switch, ready to fire.

  In the light he saw there was no one in the living room, and the door to his bedroom was closed. Had he left it that way? He started to step forward, just beyond the edge of the open door, then hesitated. As he did, he heard a phhttt and something thudded ahead of him. He saw a splinter fly from the bedroom door.

  He stepped back quickly into the hallway, breathing hard. Someone was in the dining room to his left. Could there be a second guy in his place? Not likely; the fellow in the dining room wouldn’t have pulled the trigger if his associate was in the bedroom and right in his line of fire. Nessheim reached in again and switched off the hall light, then got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the hallway of his apartment, turning with his gun pointed at what he approximated was his dining-room table.

  What now? He didn’t want to crawl down the corridor, waiting until he was spotted and shot like a sitting duck. But it was too late to retreat, go downstairs and outside, and run round the whole apartment complex to the alley at the back.

  Then he heard noise from the kitchen, the swing of the screen door, and the loud bang of the outer door as it swung shut. He stood up and ran down the hall, banging a dining-room chair that had been pulled out from the table, and swerving into his small kitchen. He flicked the light on and ducked in case anyone still stood on the outside landing. Getting his bearings, he turned the light off and opened both the screen and the outer back door, then moved out on to the porch, his gun level in one hand, the other ready to swing like a club at close quarters.

  There was no one on the porch; instead he heard running down the alleyway towards the street at the back. Nessheim half-ran, half-jumped down the stairs and ran at full speed along the alley. He had once been timed in eleven seconds for the hundred-yard dash, and he was running as hard as he could now; not even eight years in the Bureau had slowed him down much. He was confident he would catch the intruder – if he didn’t get shot in the process. He heard the gate swing at the back entrance to the alley that ran parallel to Kimbark Avenue, but he didn’t hear it close – instead there were running steps on the bricks of the alleyway and another rumbling sound. A car.

  He hit the gate with his hand, stiff-arming it open as if hitting a safety while running for a football field’s end zone. He saw a running figure to his left, maybe fifty feet away, and a waiting car, the passenger door open. The figure jumped in and the car shot off, its door staying open for a second or two until the new passenger managed to swing it shut. Nessheim raised his gun as the car accelerated down the alley, swerving to avoid the unrepaired potholes. In the light of the one street lamp, fifty yards away, he could just make out the model. It was a dark Plymouth with no licence plate on the back – though even had there been one he would not have been able to make out the numbers.

  He lowered the gun. He had had no adequate reason to shoot – what if he killed the driver? Or the passenger who had fled his apartment? You could kill an intruder you caught in your home with impunity, but you weren’t entitled to shoot him after you’d chased him for a hundred yards outside. Even if you were a sort of FBI agent.

  He stood watching as the car reached 55th Street and went right. Towards the Lake and the Drive, Nessheim noted, which suggested both that they knew the quickest way out of Hyde Park and that they weren’t from the neighbourhood. It wasn’t much to go on, he thought grimly. And when a woman in a long coat turned into the alley at the far end, walking a small dog, he headed back towards his apartment.

  He wondered how they had got in. The windows were all closed – he’d made sure of that when he and Stacey had left for the party. The front door lock had been untouched and was in good order. When he walked up the back stairs now, he examined the kitchen door; it was okay, too, though since the burglar had left it wide open as he escaped there was no way of knowing if he’d come in that way. Contrary to popular perception, picking a lock usually damaged it noticeably but the back lock was okay; it could have been picked but no one had smashed it out and pushed their way in.

  He reached up and checked the hidden crevice on the back of the stairs; the key was still there. That surprised him; when he’d told Stacey where to find it, he had assumed she would keep it with her.

  Inside he went through the apartment room by room, having first locked the kitchen door. Nothing seemed to be missing, and his three-drawer filing cabinet in a corner of the dining room was locked and untampered with. He heaved the cabinet out away from the wall and found that its tiny key was still taped behind the middle drawer.

  He checked himself in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door and saw that he’d somehow ripped his suit trousers at the right knee. There was no disguising it; sighing, he went and changed into a dark blue suit. He knew he should be getting back; any longer and Stacey would want to know what had happened to him. And the others would want their records. He went to the record player and opened the lit
tle door to the standing cupboard it sat on. He’d been only an occasional and pretty indiscriminate buyer of records, happy for the most part to listen to music on the radio. There were maybe thirty 78s standing upright and he picked through them quickly. He took some big-band albums in case people wanted to dance, and a few singers: Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, a new one by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Frank Sinatra. He put them in a paper grocery bag and tucked it under one arm. This time he left a light on in the kitchen as well as the living room, but he didn’t believe the intruders would be back. He’d surprised the guy, he was sure; he’d been looking for something and it hadn’t been Nessheim.

  At Fermi’s he found the party in full swing, if music-less. There was no sign of Stacey, but then she emerged from the kitchen, where she must still have been helping Laura Fermi, and came over right away.

  ‘You’ve been gone a long time.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he offered. ‘I thought I’d dropped my key. Have you still got yours?’ he asked casually.

  ‘No. I put it back under the stairs. I thought that’s what you wanted. But why have you changed clothes?’

  ‘I was kind of hot in the other suit,’ he said.

  She stared at him. He could see she’d had some punch: her eyes looked especially alive, the pupils sharp and reflective as mirrors. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. Have you met some of the people here?’

  ‘Every single one. Laura’s a dutiful hostess. You going to dance with me?’

  ‘Maybe later,’ he said, just as Laura Fermi approached, lifting her hands with delight when she saw his bag of records.

  A minute later Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra was playing and almost everyone was dancing, with people spilling out into the front hall and the kitchen. Fermi brought out two more bottles of gin which Nessheim mixed with the dwindling soda supply, adding more grenadine to temper the harshness of the raw spirit.

  He was standing by himself in a corner, when he was joined by the enormous bearded man called Nadelhoffer. He wore a tweed jacket with patches at the elbows, and had a thin wool sweater underneath and an open-necked shirt. He didn’t look much older than Nessheim, but he had three inches on him and must have weighed 250 pounds. In his hand, the cup of punch looked like a shot glass. He eyed Nessheim grimly. ‘You like parties?’ he said gruffly.