Hard Rain

by Peter Abrahams

  Zyzmchuk pressed a button. Fairweather came into the room.

  “You must be Mr. Zyzmchuk, sir. According to the office floor plan.” His right hand twitched, as though anticipating possible handshaking. None ensued.

  “Is Dahlin in yet?”

  “Mr. Dahlin, sir? He’s in Brussels. Mr. Keith said to tell you that the meeting has been pushed back to one.”

  “Is he in?”

  “Who, sir?”

  “Keith.”

  “Mr. Keith, sir? He’ll be in at twelve forty-five.”

  Fairweather had a crisp delivery; it made all his words sound urgent. Zyzmchuk was tired of him already.

  “Do you know where Records is, Fairweather?”

  “From the floor plan, sir.”

  “Go to the Russian section. I want pictures of all Russian consular employees, including commercial, in the Los Angeles area.”

  “Yes, sir.” Fairweather turned, almost militarily, and quick-marched to the door.

  “Make that all of California, Fairweather.”

  “All of California, sir.”

  Zyzmchuk picked up his phone. He called the Morgantown National Bank. “The manager, please,” he said.

  “That would be Mr. Spring. May I tell him who is calling?”

  “Ivan Zyzmchuk. From Washington.”

  “One moment.”

  Buzz.

  “Hello, Mr. ah …”

  “Zyzmchuk.”

  “Yes. This is Ronald Spring. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m calling from Veterans Affairs, Mr. Spring. It’s about some property that may be owned by a deceased soldier. We’re trying to verify the ownership, to help settle the estate. It may have been paid for with a check drawn on your bank.”

  “When was this?”

  “August nineteen sixty-nine. The twenty-ninth.”

  “That’s a long time ago. I wasn’t here.”

  “But do your records go back that far?”

  “Not on the computer.”

  “But somewhere?”

  “Yes. Somewhere.”

  “Then I’d appreciate it if you’d have a look.”

  “Now?”

  “That would be perfect. We’re trying to close some of our old files, what with the new budget.”

  “That may be. But there are certain channels you have to go through for this kind of thing.”

  “Even for a dead man’s bank account?”

  “I’d have to look into that. The problem is—”

  “Oh, by the way, Mr. Spring,” Zyzmchuk interrupted, “I forgot to mention that we like to send framed citations to cooperating officials in the private sector. Signed by the secretary of defense.”

  “Framed citations?”

  “Suitable for hanging.”

  “I see. It’s Ronald B. Spring, by the way. I don’t suppose the citations are ever signed by the president.”

  “Only in unusual circumstances. I could put in a favorable word.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Spring again. “What name will the account be under?”

  “Frame. Hartley E.”

  “A check on August twenty-ninth, nineteen sixty-nine.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll give it a try. Mr. ah …”

  “Thanks.” Zyzmchuk gave him the number and hung up. He buzzed Fairweather.

  “Just coming, sir.”

  Fairweather entered with a stack of folders. “Here are the pictures, sir. All Soviet consular employees, including commercial, in California. I asked for ‘Russian’ as you directed, sir, but the woman said everything was filed under ‘Soviet.’”

  “My mistake,” Zyzmchuk said. He would never stop making it.

  Fairweather laid the folders on his desk. “Anything else, sir?”

  “Yes. Answer any calls on my line ‘Veterans Affairs, Estate Accounting Department.’”

  Fairweather’s eyes widened. This was the kind of excitement he’d been anticipating. “Forever, sir?”

  “Just until I tell you to stop.”

  “Of course, sir.” He quick-marched away.

  Zyzmchuk began opening the folders. He examined passport-sized photographs of Russian faces, mostly male, some female. The faces wore the solemn expressions of business people going about their affairs. One or two had allowed themselves a faint smile, to show they were regular guys at heart. Or perhaps they just couldn’t contain their amusement when they saw the official job descriptions.

  Mr. Mickey was one of the smilers. His platinum hair and pale eyes made the photographic resolution seem poor, but Zyzmchuk never had trouble remembering the faces of people who tried to kill him. Mr. Mickey was listed as a technical advisor in the trade section of the San Francisco consulate. And underneath the picture was Mr. Mickey’s name: Mikhail Tsarenko. His age: thirty-eight. And a notation: GRU member. Rank—Major (as of Sept. 1984).

  Zyzmchuk was still looking at Mikhail Tsarenko’s picture when his line buzzed. “It’s a Mr. Spring,” Fairweather whispered. “I told him it was Veterans Affairs. He didn’t seem surprised.”

  “Put him on.”

  “Hello,” said Mr. Spring. “Mr. ah …?”

  “Yes,” Zyzmchuk said. “That was quick.”

  “Just because it’s not in the computer doesn’t mean we can’t find it,” Mr. Spring said, a little huffily.

  “Right,” said Zyzmchuk. “And did you?”

  “Five thousand one hundred and twenty-five dollars, made out to Big-Top Motors in Bennington, Vermont, August twenty-ninth, nineteen sixty-nine?”

  “That’s it.”

  There was a slight pause. Then Mr. Spring said, “Is it the same Hartley Frame they put up a monument for the other day? The senator’s kid?”

  “Yes. It must have been one of the last checks he wrote.”

  A longer pause. Zyzmchuk heard rustling paper. “Second last,” Mr. Spring said. “I can’t imagine his parents being concerned about tracing five grand from twenty years ago.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with me,” Zyzmchuk said. “When was the last one?”

  “The last what?”

  “Check.”

  “Do you need to know that, too?”

  “We value complete records, just like you,” Zyzmchuk said. “Was that Ronald B. Spring, by the way?”

  Mr. Spring made a breathy sound. It might have been a sigh. “Yes,” he said. “B for Barry.”

  “Do you want the citation to read Ronald B. or Ronald Barry?”

  Silence. “Ronald B., I guess. That’s the way they know me up here.”

  “Tell me about the last check, Ronald B.”

  Paper rustled. “The last check. Okay. It was made out to Mojo Guitars Limited, Reno, Nevada. Four hundred and sixty-four dollars, thirty-three cents.”

  “When was that?”

  “January fourteenth, nineteen seventy. It left seventeen dollars and eighty cents in the account. The account was ruled inactive in nineteen seventy-one and the money transferred into general funds.”

  “Do you have the two checks in front of you, Mr. Spring?”

  “I do.”

  “Look at the signatures.”

  “I’m looking.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Is there anything unusual?”

  “Unusual?”

  “Think back to your teller days.”

  “I was never a teller.”

  “But if you had been,” Zyzmchuk said, “would you notice anything unusual about the signatures?”

  Pause. “No. They look fine to me. ‘Hartley Frame.’ That’s all.”

  “Are they identical, Mr. Spring?”

  “Oh, that. Yes. Identical. At least as far as I can tell. But I’m not a handwriting expert.”

  “Okay,” Zyzmchuk said. “Thanks.”

  “Mr. ah …?”

  “Yes.”

  “When might I expect the citation?”

  “We’ll try to get it out by Christmas,” Zyzmchu
k said. “But you know the government.”

  Mr. Spring giggled. They said good-bye.

  Fairweather came in. “Mr. Keith called, sir. The meeting’s postponed till two-thirty.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t say, sir.”

  “Where’s he calling from?”

  “I don’t know, sir. He said he can’t be reached.”

  “Stop calling me ‘sir.’”

  “Yes …” He stretched out the “s” so that it sounded like the beginning of the forbidden word. “What should I call you then?”

  “Anything but ‘sir.’”

  “Yess.”

  Zyzmchuk glanced out his window. In the past few hours, a solid line of clouds had slid across the sky like the roof of a convertible. “Call me when he arrives.”

  “Yess.”

  “And Fairweather.”

  “Yess?”

  “Do you know how to work the computer?”

  “That’s what a GR-3 does, s—.”

  “Then get me the army records for this man.” He wrote “Hartley E. Frame” on a slip of paper and handed it to Fairweather.

  “I’ll get right on it,” said Fairweather.

  Zyzmchuk walked down the hall to Dahlin’s office. No one was there but Gorbachev, pissing against the hedge. He crossed the hall and looked in Keith’s office. Keith didn’t have photographs on his walls. He had maps. There was nothing strategic about them. They were maps of the wine-making regions of Europe. He also had a nice Picasso calendar and the plushest furniture, deepest rugs and biggest plants in the building. None of it was government issue—he’d paid for everything himself.

  A copy of The New York Times lay on his desk. It was opened to a Frank Prial article on Bordeaux futures. “How are things in your daddy’s wine cellar?” Zyzmchuk asked aloud, just in case anyone was listening. Then he sat down at the desk and called Keith’s home number. It rang twenty times before he hung up.

  2:30. No Keith. Zyzmchuk went downstairs for coffee. “There’s going to be a big storm,” a cleaning woman by the machine was saying.

  “Rain or snow?” said the janitor.

  “Rain here. Snow up north.”

  Zyzmchuk poured himself a cup of coffee and went to the front door. The clouds had grown darker and looked swollen, as though they were holding their breath. He returned to his office and called the 1826 House, room 19. There was no answer.

  At three Fairweather entered. “Mr. Zyzmchuk?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is it okay if I call you ‘Mr. Zyzmchuk’?”

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “Oh. Mr. Keith called. He’s been delayed. The meeting’s not till five.”

  “Is he still on the line?”

  “No, Mr. Zyzmchuk.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He said he can’t be reached.”

  “But the call came from somewhere.”

  Fairweather backed up a step or two. Zyzmchuk realized he’d raised his voice. “I think he was in his car, s—Mr. Zyzmchuk. I heard some honking.”

  “Get him on the line.”

  Fairweather rang the phone in Keith’s car. No one answered. “Maybe he stopped for gas or something,” Fairweather said.

  “Try again in ten minutes.”

  Fairweather tried again in ten minutes. And ten minutes after that. But he couldn’t reach Keith.

  “Did he sound nearby?” Zyzmchuk asked.

  “Nearby?”

  “Or far away.”

  Fairweather thought. “I really couldn’t say, Mr. Zyzmchuk. I was concentrating on getting the message right, you know?”

  Fairweather returned to his office. Zyzmchuk tried room 19 at the 1826 House again. Still no answer. He tried room 20. No answer. Outside his window the clouds kept darkening and growing more massive. Lights shone in all the buildings on the skyline.

  Five o’clock. No Keith. Fairweather came in. “Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, Mr. Zyzmchuk.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wonder if I might … go home now. Call it a day, kind of. I wanted to get cracking on the stuffing.”

  “Did you find Hartley Frame’s army record?”

  “Oh, that,” Fairweather said. “I forgot to mention. There was no army record for Hartley Frame.”

  “You must have made a mistake,” Zyzmchuk said. Grace hadn’t told him there was no record; she had said it was classified.

  “No, Mr. Zyzmchuk. I can show you if you like.”

  Zyzmchuk followed Fairweather into Grace’s office. Fairweather sat before the screen and started tapping the keys. His hairless fingers had a quick light touch, like a pianist’s. “Okay,” he said, after a minute or two. “We’re in army records.” He typed, “Frame, Hartley E.”

  The rest of the screen remained blank for several seconds. Then a message appeared: “Error 57—Invalid File Name.”

  “Meaning?” said Zyzmchuk.

  “Meaning, I think, sir, Mr. Zyzmchuk, that Frame, Hartley E., was never in the army. Would you like me to try the other services?”

  “No.”

  There was a long silence. Zyzmchuk felt Fairweather’s eyes on him. For a moment he believed Fairweather might be thinking along with him. “What is it, Fairweather?”

  “Will that be all, then?” Fairweather asked, proving he wasn’t.

  “Yes.”

  “I can go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Zyzmchuk. It’ll be a pleasure working with someone of your experience. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  The first raindrops landed softly on the window and ran down the glass in hesitant streams.

  38

  Grace lived in a one-room apartment just east of the Georgetown campus. Ivan Zyzmchuk pressed her buzzer in the lobby. Grace’s voice didn’t come over the intercom; the lock didn’t click. Two men in business suits came down the stairs and opened the door. “I’ve got to get my hands on some Redskins tickets,” one said in French.

  “I’m desolated,” the other replied, also in French. “Je ne peux pas vous aider.”

  Zyzmchuk went through the doorway and up two flights. At the end of a corridor, he knocked on Grace’s door. No one answered, but he heard tinny excitement on the other side of the door, the kind of excitement that comes out of a box with rabbit ears.

  He knocked again. “Grace,” he called. “It’s me. Ivan.” Mr. Z., he’d almost said.

  Grace opened the door. She wore a quilted pink housecoat and fluffy pink slippers. The color matched her eyes. He thought she’d lost weight. It didn’t suit her.

  “Oh, Mr. Z.,” she said. “They fired me.”

  Her lip trembled. He thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t. “May I come in?” he said.

  “It’s a pigsty. It’s a dump anyway, but now it’s a pigsty too.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Grace stepped aside. Zyzmchuk went in. Framed prints hung on the walls, Degas prints, all of them with subjects from the ballet. The slender girls in tutus looked down on Grace’s room: the unmade single bed; the litter of newspapers and magazines; the unwashed coffee mugs on every surface; the game show contestants on the box in the corner, jumping up and down at the sight of a toaster.

  “I told you,” Grace said. “It’s a pigsty.”

  Zyzmchuk cleared a space on the couch and sat down. “What happened, Grace?”

  She was gazing at the TV. “They fired me,” she said quietly. “What am I going to do?” Drums rolled. Trumpets blared. A beautiful woman in a tight dress pulled back a scarlet curtain. Waiting on the other side were a microwave oven and a VCR. Applause.

  Zyzmchuk got up and switched off the set. “Who fired you?”

  “Mr. McKenna. He does all the firing.”

  “Did he give a reason?”

  “Poor job performance.”

  “That’s ludicrous. Your record’s outstanding.”

  Grace shrugged. There was no fight in her; she needed an office to function, the way a
honeybee needs a hive.

  “McKenna doesn’t know anything about your work. Who gave him his orders?”

  “I don’t know. It could have been anybody.”

  “It couldn’t have been anybody, Grace. Who could have done it?”

  “You mean technically?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d have to think.”

  “Think.”

  Grace’s eyes cleared a little; he’d plugged her into office routine, no matter how temporary, how hopeless. Zyzmchuk picked up her phone. He called the 1826 House, first one room, then the other. The phone rang and rang. Grace was waiting for his attention. He hung up.

  “There are only three people with the authority, Mr. Z. Besides Mr. McKenna.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Mr. Dahlin, Mr. Keith.”

  “That’s two. Who’s the third?”

  “You, Mr. Z.”

  He smiled, but was conscious of how quickly it came and went. Time was short and he was far away. “It wasn’t me,” he said.

  Grace’s lip trembled. “Oh, I know that.”

  “So who was it?”

  She thought. Her eyes grew blurry again. “I just don’t know. Neither of them ever expressed any dissatisfaction with my work. And Mr. Keith hasn’t even been in the office much lately.”

  “Did anyone know you’d been helping me?”

  “Helping you?”

  “Looking for Hartley Frame’s army file.”

  She shook her head. “Not unless someone accessed my logs.”

  “You logged the Hartley Frame search?”

  Grace nodded. “And the woman. I log everything, Mr. Z. I always go by the book. Or went by the book, I should say.” She glanced around her room, as though taking in where that had got her.

  “What woman?” Zyzmchuk said.

  “The one you asked me to look up.” Grace was watching him closely. “Jessie something. She had two last names. There was nothing on her. I tried the Bur—”

  “You logged her too?”

  Zyzmchuk realized he had raised his voice; he was also on his feet, although he didn’t recall standing up.

  Grace backed away, one hand holding her housecoat tightly closed at the throat. “Did I do something wrong?”

  Zyzmchuk struggled to make his voice reassuring. “No, Grace. Who could have accessed your logs?”

  “Anyone with my code.”

  “Who has your code?”

  “It’s no big secret. D-base has it, Mr. McKenna, even computer maintenance.”