The Accidental Agent

by Andrew Rosenheim

  ‘Sure. This is a good one.’ He was struck by how little it resembled his preconceptions.

  ‘They’re not for me. You know, I recognise your name.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I grew up in Wisconsin, just outside Waupaca.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Nessheim, though he knew this from the dossier. ‘I’m from just outside Bremen myself.’

  ‘I thought so. If you’re the same James Nessheim, you used to make the papers.’

  ‘I am, if it was about football. You played ball yourself, I take it.’

  Nadelhoffer shrugged. ‘It was unavoidable when I was growing up. The excitements of a small town.’

  A dry sense of humour, but with a melancholic undertone. Nessheim said cheerfully, ‘I know what you mean. Eating the big dinner is the main event.’ Nadelhoffer didn’t seem to get the allusion, and Nessheim realised most physicists probably didn’t read Hemingway.

  Fortunately, Kalvin and Fermi joined them now. Fermi pointed to the middle of the room. ‘Miss Madison is an excellent dancer.’

  Nessheim turned and saw Stacey jitterbugging with one of the young physicists; the other dancers had moved to give them space.

  ‘That is a remarkable young woman,’ said Kalvin. ‘I was talking to her and it turns out she speaks very good Spanish. Do all maids in America speak Spanish?’

  It was hard to tell if Kalvin was joking; Fermi looked baffled by the reference to a maid. Nessheim said, ‘She’s been to Mexico.’

  Kalvin stiffened almost imperceptibly, then relaxed. ‘That would explain the accent, I suppose.’

  Zinn came up and put a friendly arm around Nessheim’s shoulder. ‘Thank God you showed up at the Met Lab, buddy.’

  Fermi laughed and looked at Nessheim. ‘I told you Mr Zinn did not enjoy the transporting of graphite.’

  Zinn raised his glass. ‘Here’s to Nessheim. My replacement in the Labours of Hercules.’

  Kalvin said sardonically, ‘Don’t worry, Walter. You are irreplaceable.’

  ‘Everyone can be replaced,’ said Fermi firmly. ‘Everyone. Though I am reluctant to say this, that includes me!’ They all laughed.

  Zinn said, ‘You’ve done a terrific job getting the people you want, Professor. What’s your secret? No one ever turns you down.’

  ‘That is true, but it is not to do with me. Once they understand the importance of the work they all want to come. They realise that they will be present at the birth of a new kind of creation.’

  ‘God help them,’ Nadelhoffer intoned and Nessheim saw that he was serious. His beard, dark and Lincolnesque, gave an Old Testament gravity to the pronouncement.

  Fermi looked embarrassed by the intervention, and Zinn tried to lighten things: ‘Go on, Professor. Has anybody turned you down?’

  Fermi thought for a moment. ‘In fact, no. We did have one person who did not come after all. But that was different. He had an accident.’

  ‘A bad one?’ asked Nessheim.

  ‘The worst,’ Nadelhoffer interjected. ‘A fatality.’

  Dourness again hovered over their talk. Fermi looked keen to go and see to his other guests, while Zinn’s wife was gesturing for him to join her. Nessheim spoke up quickly. ‘Who had the accident, Professor?’

  Fermi frowned and shook his head unhappily. His eyes had turned into dark pools of sadness. ‘You would not have heard of him, but he helped to bring me to America. I owe him a lot. And I am told he did remarkable work when he was much younger. His name was Perkins. Professor Arthur Perkins.’

  12

  WHEN THEY FINALLY left the party, just short of midnight, Stacey clutched Nessheim’s arm as much for support as from affection. He had stuck to apple juice, for he had wanted to stay alert even if the horse had already fled the barn, but Stacey had made up for his shortfall. The wind had died, and as they walked the block over to Nessheim’s apartment, Stacey yapped away as he guided her home.

  ‘What’s the pencil factory?’ she asked. ‘I met some man tonight who said he was its foreman.’

  It must have been Zinn, making a joke about graphite; he liked to say they could go into the pencil business with the graphite offcuts from their work. ‘I’m not sure who you mean,’ said Nessheim.

  ‘And who was that morose giant of a man?’

  ‘You mean Nadelhoffer? He works with Professor Fermi.’

  ‘What’s eating him? You’d have thought the war was over – and we’d lost twice.’

  ‘He gets weighed down by things, I guess.’

  ‘I would too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t play me for a mug, Nessheim. Anyone could tell these guys are doing hush-hush work.’ Stacey exhaled with exasperation. ‘I bet those guys tell their wives what they’re up to,’ she said. He knew she was trying to taunt him into indiscretion. ‘Especially Nadelhoffer.’

  ‘He’s not married, Stacey. And I doubt Professor Fermi tells his wife a thing.’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on that. And I bet the others do.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said neutrally, hoping she would leave it alone.

  ‘I mean, if you and I were married, you’d tell me.’

  It was an odd thing to say. He looked at her strangely; she seemed unperturbed. At last he said, ‘We’re not married.’

  Stacey squared her shoulders and said ‘Humph’ in a curiously old-fashioned way. Then she recovered, saying, ‘Don’t look so scared, Agent Nessheim.’

  When they reached the courtyard on Kimbark Avenue, he was relieved to see the light still on in his living room. Inside the atrium he opened the outer door, and they went up into the apartment. He entered first, but though there was a faint whiff of cordite inside, and the splintering on the bedroom door, Stacey had hit the punch hard enough not to notice, and everything else was as he’d left it. When he came out of the bathroom dressed only in his boxer shorts, he found her under the covers, naked, alluring, and out for the count.

  He didn’t feel sleepy, so he went to the kitchen and poured himself a small Scotch, then sat in the dining room so as not to disturb Stacey. He realised he hadn’t been back to her apartment again since their first night together.

  What did this mean? Was there a chance of a life with her? he wondered. It would certainly be eventful: there would always be the equivalent of a Spanish-looking guy at the end of the bar, eyeing her up. That wasn’t the problem: Trudy, his first girlfriend back in Wisconsin, had been a pretty girl who drew more than her share of admiring stares. But unlike Trudy, Stacey would stare back, or smile, or flirt. Sometimes all three.

  He supposed he could deal with that, or at least try to get used to it. Maybe if she got married and had kids she would lose some of that ‘look at me’ business. Wasn’t that true of most women? They had kids, and suddenly instead of worrying about themselves, they found a new world to worry about. But it was hard to see Stacey Madison ever settling down. She was the kind of woman who drank life dry, moving from waterhole to waterhole (man to man, bar to bar, party to party), never sated, never full, never happy with the same source of the energising fuel she lived on.

  When he went into the bedroom, the bedside lamp was on. Stacey stirred and then sat up drowsily. She said, ‘Hand me a smoke, will you? I’ve lost my lighter. There’re matches in the wooden box.’

  He found the box and opened the lid. Inside he didn’t find matches, but instead a bracelet, a small necklace, and a ring. His eyes fixed on the ring, and he slowly brought it out of the box. It was gold, simple, unadorned; it could only be for one thing. He sighed involuntarily.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Her voice came from the bed, alert now.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. But he had to know. ‘What’s this?’

  He could see her sit up to peer at him – she was short-sighted but too vain to wear glasses.

  He brought the ring over to the bed. Without a word he held it about a foot from her eyes.

  ‘Ah, I brought the wrong box. Damn.’ She sounded unruffled.
She added, ‘That’s my wedding ring. Pretty, isn’t it?’

  ‘When did that happen?’ he asked, trying to keep the anger he felt out of his voice.

  ‘Are you going all puritan on me, Nessheim? Don’t tell me you haven’t slept with a married woman before.’

  ‘I’m not telling you anything,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Pious, is that it?’ Her scorn seemed affected.

  ‘No. Mr Careful if the husband has a gun.’ He was trying to show he didn’t care, but he couldn’t carry it off.

  Stacey must have wanted the same thing, for she tried to laugh. She reached her hand out for his, but he ignored it. She said, ‘Cat got your tongue? You’ve done it before. Why’s this so different?’

  ‘Because –’ he said, then stopped, too shook up inside to speak. He wanted to tell her it was different because he loved her and didn’t want her married to another man. But it was not a confession he could bring himself to make. He’d done that once with her and been burnt. Never again. So he said only, ‘You might have told me.’

  ‘Why? Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters. It makes me feel … feel like …’

  ‘A gigolo?’ Stacey laughed out loud to his fury. ‘You’re many things, Nessheim, most of them good, but you’re not a gigolo.’

  He didn’t join her laughter. ‘So what about this husband of yours?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I’ll tell you anyway. He’s in Reno as we speak. In two weeks – actually fifteen days and yes, I’m counting – we’ll be divorced. Satisfied?’

  ‘Sure.’ He wanted desperately to believe her.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about him. His name is George Tweedy. Not a name to be reckoned with if you ask me. He’s –’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ he said angrily.

  ‘Okay,’ she said mildly. ‘Everybody’s got a past, Nessheim. Even you. Now get me that smoke, will you?’

  He did and soon Stacey was snoring gently, while he lay there, willing himself to sleep as well. But he was too much on edge, after the break-in earlier and after this new revelation. Did he believe Stacey about her impending divorce? He didn’t really know. Did it matter? He didn’t know that either.

  He thought back to the evening. How had the intruder got in? Stacey had borrowed the only other key, but for some reason she had put it back. It was conceivable that the intruder had found it, though very unlikely. But say he had found it – why had he put it back before he was done inside?

  The only conclusion was no conclusion. If there were others, Nessheim couldn’t see them. Or didn’t want to.

  Part Four

  13

  ‘THIS IS A buffer. They’ve saved a lot of lives.’

  But not the one Guttman was interested in. He tried to look appreciative as the man named Mullen from Otis Elevators pointed to an oil barrel at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

  Next to Mullen stood the building superintendent, Schuster, who was anxious and ingratiating. The police would have been here after the accident, maybe half a dozen times, and it was a wonder Schuster had kept his job. He had greeted the phoned news of Guttman’s visit as if it were a call from the dead.

  They were standing in the basement of 185 Riverside, on the outer edge of Manhattan’s West Side at 91st Street. After taking the train very early that morning from D.C., Guttman had come up on the Seventh Avenue Line from Penn Station.

  Now Mullen said, ‘Go on,’ as though he was teaching a reluctant kid to drive. ‘Step in and have a look for yourself.’

  Guttman did so gingerly, ducking under the little door’s lintel, emerging at the bottom of the shaft where he craned his neck and stared up nervously. At the very top of the shaft there was a skylight, and tinsel trails of light drifted down on either side of the elevator car, which he could just make out many floors above. Though the professional part of Guttman overcame the apprehensive, he was still scared that at any minute the elevator might come plummeting down.

  He cursed Nessheim for getting him into this. They had got nowhere looking for the mysterious man Kalvin had met at the museum, and in the absence of any other leads, Guttman had felt obliged to do something when a new name surfaced. Once Guttman learned more about Arthur Perkins, RIP, it had seemed worth a trip just to make sure his death had been the freak accident the local New York police said it was.

  Guttman pointed to a bunch of thick looped wires that were dangling from the shaft above. ‘What are those?’ he asked.

  ‘The compensating cables,’ Mullen said confidently, stepping through the door to join him in the bottom of the shaft. ‘There are a dozen of them above the car – each one’s strong enough to support the elevator on its own in case the others break.’

  ‘What happens if all of them break?’

  ‘Slats come out from the side, hook on to the guide rails and stop the car from descending further. If for some reason that doesn’t work, we’ve got the buffer down here to cushion the impact.’ Mullen added with a touch of pride, ‘The only time that’s happened, the occupant of the elevator survived.’

  Guttman stepped back through the opening, relieved to be out from beneath the elevator. The basement corridor seemed a safe if unattractive haven; the walls had been painted a dingy vanilla. What a contrast to the opulent lobby upstairs, with its marble-tiled floor, gold rococo sconces, and a pair of six-foot deco mirrors that gave a magnified sense of space. Even the elevator, which Guttman had travelled in briefly and apprehensively because of its history, was luxuriously panelled in cherry wood; the plum-sized buttons for each floor were padded in gold plush. Riverside Drive wasn’t Fifth Avenue, and the tenants here were affluent rather than rich, but these buildings had been created to attract the crème of Manhattan’s West Side, and in that they had succeeded.

  ‘But not this time,’ said Guttman. He pointed to the shaft.

  ‘How’s that?’ asked Mullen.

  ‘The cables didn’t work, did they?’ Guttman asked impatiently. He could visualise the elevator car falling, splintering on impact when it landed. What did people say? If you timed it right, and jumped into the air just as the elevator landed, you could survive.

  He was contemplating this when Mullen said abruptly, ‘That’s not what happened here. There was nothing wrong with the elevator car.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Guttman was alert now.

  ‘The elevator car didn’t fall. The victim did.’ And when Guttman looked puzzled, Mullen explained. Professor Arthur Perkins had left his apartment on the eleventh floor just before nine o’clock in the morning – like he always did. He pushed the elevator button on his floor. And when the doors to the elevator opened, Perkins stepped forward to get in. Only the actual elevator compartment was on the twelfth floor, which meant that he stepped into space.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Guttman. He felt sickened. Forget timing your jump; this would be a descent filled with desperation and panic. What a horrible way to die. Guttman tried to imagine what Arthur Perkins had been thinking as he fell, imagining the feelings of terror as the man realized nothing was going to break his fall. Perkins would have fallen eleven storeys to … right where Guttman had just been standing.

  Surprised to learn how Arthur Perkins had died, Guttman grew angry, partly because he was struggling with his own fear. He said, ‘How did it happen? I don’t want to hear how the Otis Elevator Company takes precautions against everything from power cuts to acts of God. Something went wrong.’ Then he turned to the super. ‘And don’t tell me you were too busy moving the Festerwalds’ refrigerator or squashing cockroaches in Mrs Du Vivier’s bathroom. I want to know why the elevator stopped on twelve, but the doors opened on eleven.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the two men said, almost in unison.

  Guttman turned to the super. ‘Is there an elevator man for the building?’

  Schuster shook his head. ‘The doorman doubles as the elevator man.’


  ‘And that morning?’

  ‘The doorman was off sick.’

  How convenient, thought Guttman. ‘I’ll want to talk to him.’

  Schuster said, ‘He’s called Stokes. I fired him ten days after the accident.’

  ‘You got his address?’

  ‘I have his old one. Right now he’s of “no known abode”. Your best bet would be the Bowery.’

  ‘A boozer?’

  ‘And then some. You might as well know, he’s my wife’s cousin and yes, that’s why I hired him. Do I regret it. He was off sick more than he was on.’

  ‘So that day, who ran the elevator for the residents?’

  ‘Nobody. It’s automatic anyway – the doorman runs it as a kind of courtesy. I was doorman, but still super too.’

  ‘And you were too busy fixing the Festerwald’s icebox to work the elevator.’

  ‘Actually, I was finding a cab for Mrs Monroe.’

  Guttman thought for a minute, then said abruptly, ‘Okay, you can go now.’

  Schuster seemed surprised. ‘Really? That’s it?’

  ‘Yeah. Unless you’ve got something else to say?’

  ‘No, no. It’s just that the cops talked to me for hours last year.’

  ‘I’m sure they did. So no sense duplicating the process.’

  The super left and the Otis man, Mullen, started to follow him. ‘Not so fast,’ said Guttman.

  ‘Yeah?’ said the man warily.

  Guttman softened his voice. ‘Can you give me any idea how this happened? I’m not holding you to it – I just want your best bet.’

  Mullen seemed to take this as a challenge. ‘Well,’ he said, and Guttman could see he was in his element now. What followed probably lasted only a couple of minutes, but Guttman felt as though he was trapped with the club bore on a long trip in a small car. Flyweights, ratchets, sheaves, a mysterious governor, hoistway doors and car doors and of course the hoistway door interlock followed by the hoistway door keyhole. The terms were spat out without explanation until finally Mullen paused for breath.