The Dead Don't Bleed: A Novel

by David Krugler

  “I didn’t say that—I just said I didn’t think it was Amtorg.” He paused, we waited. “I’m gonna share something with you boys you gotta keep to yourselves. The Reds aren’t using Amtorg like they used to. Early on, sure, they shipped in spies like United Fruit brings in bananas. But it’s too obvious to keep that up. The Russian embassy and the N.K.V.D.”—Soviet secret police—“know we’re tracking every single Russian who comes in with Amtorg stamped on his visa. Now, does that mean the Reds are winding down their ops here? War’s about to end, they’re just gonna close up shop and go home?”

  We knew better than to answer—when the commander got going on the Reds, best you wind your watch and settle in.

  “So how are the Reds doing it now, how are they infiltrating? I just had a confab with Army SigInt—they picked up a helluva spike in the Russians’ cable traffic. They’re working round-the-clock on the code, no luck yet. Now I don’t think they’ll ever break it, but that’s not my point—fact that the cables are up fifty percent tells us something, doesn’t it?”

  We nodded dutifully.

  “So forget Amtorg,” Paslett finished. “Reds seeded new plants years ago, now they’re reaping bumper crops.”

  “You think Skerrill was a Red spy, sir?” Terrance asked.

  “I don’t know—yet. But I think Skerrill getting killed after going soft on Amtorg isn’t a coincidence. And you two are gonna find out if I’m right.”

  “Sir, if I may . . . ?”

  Paslett nodded curtly at me.

  “If Skerrill was a Russian plant, wouldn’t him waffling on this Amtorg investigation be a dead giveaway? To keep his cover, he’d be gung-ho. Especially if Amtorg’s no longer the espionage front it was. Like you said, sir.”

  Being a bright penny earned me a tight smile.

  “Very good, lieutenant—guess you learned a thing or two at the Funhouse. Normally, yes, the plant would keep his cover at all costs. But I think something went wrong. Skerrill encountered someone he knew at Amtorg, and he panicked.”

  “Sir, that shouldn’t happen,” Terrance put in. “Cells are supposed to be isolated, and no one’s better at that than the Russians.”

  Paslett’s withering look caused my partner’s shoulders to slump an inch or two. “I did say something went wrong, didn’t I, Lieutenant Daley?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And for the record, we’re better at operational security than the Russians.”

  “But, sir, then who would want to murder Skerrill?” I put in.

  “Jesus, you two—do I gotta fetch a towel so you can dry off behind your ears? If Skerrill panicked and exposed himself, the Reds would bump him off to keep all the other plants protected.” He thumped his desk. “Fifty percent increase in cable traffic! They’re not sending happy birthday wishes to Uncle Joe, goddammit. SigInt says most of that increase is outta the Russian embassy right here in D.C., and the consulate in New York’s a close second. The Reds are on to something big in our yard, and we’ve gotta find out pronto—before the war’s over.”

  “Yessir,” we unisoned.

  “Now, I want you to let the D.C. boys do their routine but never let ’em forget who’s in charge. I want you turning Skerrill’s life upside down for any connection to the Russians. If you don’t find one—and you damn well better look long and hard—then we’ll drop his murder back in the M.P.D.’s lap as fast as we snatched it away.”

  “Sir, what if what we find takes us to the Bermuda Special?” I asked.

  “If there are holes you need filled, I’ll fill them.” He glanced at his watch. “You need to get to the scene. Take this.” He slid Skerrill’s service jacket across the desk.

  We stood up, I picked up the file, we turned to go.

  Paslett spoke before we opened the door. “Sixteen-Z raised holy hell about us taking this. I had to call in a marker the director’s owed me for a while. A lot of fellas are going to be watching you close, sniffing around. But this needs to be our own little Bermuda Special, got it?”

  We got it.

  THE CORONER’S WAGON ARRIVED AT THE SCENE AT 3 A.M. I HELPED THE driver roll Skerrill onto a stretcher and load him up. Terrance told Durkin we’d call him later that day, after we got a little sleep and reviewed Skerrill’s records. Night sky just paling, wrens and robins stirring as I went home. I had a basement flat in a row house on Caroline Street, just off Fourteenth Street, in Northwest Washington. A friend of my pop’s, a sour German named Kleist, owned the house. Years ago, back in Chicago, Pop must have done something awful nice for Kleist, because he let me have the joint all to myself. In wartime Washington, your own place was as scarce as nylon stockings or copper pipes. Kleist glared at me every month when he collected the rent, like he was trying to eyeball me into three tenants and a lot more moolah.

  A short set of cement stairs led to my door. Small front room, iron bars on the windows. Just one bedroom, long and narrow, parallel to a hallway leading to a galley kitchen and toilet with a shower stall. No stove, just a two-burner hotplate and a small icebox. Came with a fourth-hand sofa, battered easy chair, wobbly table, decent-enough bed.

  Franklin D. barely lifted his head from his paws when I came in. A brown and white tabby, a stray I’d coaxed in from the alley colony to take care of the mice that scrabbled behind the walls at night. He was a decent mouser, though sometimes I had to leave his food bowl empty to motivate him. Tilted his head at my scratch, went back to sleep when I walked to the kitchen. I grabbed a beer from the icebox and double-popped the can with the opener dangling from a nail. After prying off my brogans, I stretched out on my mattress and stared at the roughly plastered ceiling.

  Took a long pull of my beer. If I ran B-7, I’d let the M.P.D. keep this case lock, stock, and barrel. Hell, I’d never done police work. Just because the murder had occurred on property the Navy had a claim on didn’t mean O.N.I. had to take the case, even with the victim being an officer. Paslett’s instincts were good, but sometimes he got carried away. He saw Reds around every corner, and his paranoia had only deepened as the end of the war approached. There were a thousand and one reasons why Skerrill might have been killed on this particular night in late April 1945, and Paslett’s hunch that Skerrill might be a Russian plant looked like awful weak tea to me. But then, Paslett had Commander in front of his name; Terrance and I just had Lieutenant j.g.

  I drained my beer and set the can on the floor. I suppose anxiety over investigating a murder with barely a clue as to how to go about it should’ve kept me awake, but during war, when you’re safely stateside, you don’t sacrifice what precious time you have for sleep to fret about the dead.

  CHAPTER 2

  TERRANCE AND I MET AT 8 A.M. AT OUR SHARED OFFICE IN THE Navy Building, one of the “tempos” lining the National Mall. These three-story buildings had as much beauty as a hog shed and only slightly more comfort. No conditioned air, only small casement windows that took a lot of tugging to open. The heat failed to circulate in winter, your toes went numb under your desk. (Not a few secretaries and stenos switched out their flats and pumps for wool socks when they had the night shift.) The bathrooms were cramped, the corridors dark. Paint peeled from the ceilings and most of the fixtures—light casings, door knobs, blinds—were loose. Seasonal change, a warm spring day or a fall cold snap, brought shudders, creaks, and pops throughout the building.

  Terrance took a long drink of coffee, pulled on his cigarette. “Never believe the dream I had last night.”

  “Lemme guess: You and Rita Hayworth were solving murders.”

  “Now, that would be a dream. But seeing as how you were there instead of her, it was more of a nightmare.”

  I grinned and lit a cigarette of my own, second of the day—the nicotine evaporated the sleepiness I hadn’t been able to shake during the bus ride in. I picked up Skerrill’s service jacket. “How d’you want to do this?”

  “Split it up, I guess.”

  I slid the file across our facing desks. Terrance took the
report on the Mexican operation that had busted up the Jap mercury smuggling ring, I read Skerrill’s enlistment form. Tried to read, that is—I had trouble concentrating. I hadn’t cared for Skerrill. Hell, I’d hated him. At the Funhouse he’d been cocky and arrogant, had never missed a chance to show off or razz the rest of us when we made a mistake. But he’d been one of us, had worn the same uniform, had served the same side. He deserved a full investigation. I had to find a way to give him a fair shake so I could do my job. Let bygones be bygones, I resolved.

  Skerrill was nineteen when he got his ensign’s commission in the fall of 1940. An only child, grew up in Philly. Pop was a department-store floorwalker, mom a window dresser. One year of college, chemistry major, University of Pennsylvania. First posting, D.C. Navy Yard, Oil Reclamation Lab. A year there, then promotion to lieutenant junior grade and a transfer to O.N.I., first stop the Funhouse.

  Skerrill could have told me some or all of this when we met, but he hadn’t. Where ya from? I’d asked at the mess, first week of our training. Nowhere special, he’d replied. I’d waited for him to ask me, but he’d taken a heaping mouthful of spaghetti, chewing noisily before saying something. You, Voigt, you’re from the Midwest. One of those ‘I’ states, right? I’d nodded, told him I was from Chicago. Shee-KAW-go, he’d echoed. Fun town, I hear, true? So I told him a story or two about how a fellow could have a good time in Chicago. By the time we finished eating, he knew a lot about me, I didn’t know anything about him.

  Something to hide even then? I wondered now, but I kept that thought to myself, asking Terrance, “Whattya got?”

  “Our boy had some real get-up-and-go.”

  “Yeah?”

  Tilting back in his chair, he said, “So Sixteen-Z recruits him special for this Mexican thing, right after you and him got outta the Funhouse.”

  “Makes sense—he studied chemistry in college for a year.”

  “Yeah, he’s there to run tests on the mercury this Mex businessman’s going to sell to the Japs’ agents. But this Mex, he’s no good—keeps losing his nerve, can’t keep his cover straight.”

  “Okay.”

  “So Skerrill convinces Commander Hughley—he’s running the op—to send him in place of the Mex. Goes to the meeting posing as a pissed-off chemist from DuPont hungry for an early retirement in Veracruz. Even spoke enough Spanish to make it feel real.”

  “Japs bought it?”

  “Their Mex contacts did. But it gets better. Skerrill—get this, he’s going by ‘Señor Corcoran,’ how d’you like that?—he convinces these Mexes the mercury they got from their other sources is no good. Puts on a big show, acting like he’s running this top-secret test created by DuPont, tells ’em they’ve been had. So they storm off to get even—lead Hughley’s team right to the rest of the smugglers.” Terrance snapped his fingers. “Bam! Just like that, Z’s rolled up an op the Japs spent a year on at least.”

  “Not too shabby for his first time in the field.” Much better than me, I thought. But I kept that to myself, too.

  Terrance pointed to the enlistment form and asked, “Anything useful?”

  “Not much. He did a year at the Yard in Oil Reclamation. Nothing unusual there. What’d he do after Mexico?”

  “Let’s find out,” handing me half of the remaining documents.

  What we got was, The Further Adventures of Boy Wonder. After Mexico, D.C. again, another false identity. Optician with a Kraut surname, fishing up at the Aberdeen Proving Ground for data on the Norden bombsight. Plan was, see if the Nazis had any sympathizers in the labs. They didn’t, but his C.O. thought Skerrill was the cat’s meow. “Born for Broadway,” he wrote in his rating. Next, shortwave propaganda, writing scripts to demoralize U-Boat crews. Didn’t even speak German, others translated; Skerrill reaped the praise: “quick study,” “eye for detail,” “exceptional creativity.”

  How about “Barrymore’s bastard son”? That’s what a Funhouse officer called him after watching him play a role during our training. Three of us—me, Skerrill, and an ensign named Lichtman—were acting out a bribery scene. Lichtman, crooked bidding agent for a defense contractor; me, his assistant; Skerrill, naval procurement officer. Lichtman and I: God-awful, grinning, mumbling. Skerrill: greedy, cunning, wary, all of it effortless. You hams would get booted outta a fourth-grade pageant! the officer shouted at me and Lichtman as he summoned replacements to try the scene with Skerrill.

  Yet I turned the last page of my documents still not knowing who Skerrill was. He never visited his parents, never traveled, didn’t belong to fraternal organizations or social clubs. No store accounts, no telephone, no car. Boarded cheaply in a house in Brookland, in Northeast Washington. No trace of hinky anywhere: debts, unexplained absences, expensive habits. On paper, Skerrill lived frugally, quietly, honestly.

  “Too squeaky-clean, I think,” said Terrance, lighting up.

  “Yeah.”

  “So you didn’t get to know him, huh? At the Funhouse?” Studying me through a plume of smoke.

  “S’what I told Paslett, right?”

  “But now it’s me asking. Your old buddy, partner-o’-yours.”

  “All right, maybe I saw more’a Skerrill than I let on.”

  “Maybe?” Pitch-perfect imitation of Paslett; we both grinned.

  “We went through a lotta training exercises together, me and Skerrill—I shoulda told the commander that. But were we pals? Uh-uh—nobody was pals with Skerrill.”

  “A lone wolf, huh.” Terrance stubbed out his cigarette. “Maybe the old man’s right. Christ, way he’s always going on about the goddamned Reds, sometimes you gotta wonder if he’s off his rocker, but there’s something fishy about our boy Skerrill.”

  “Like he wanted everything to look perfect on the outside.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But what’d he do for kicks, who were his pals? Did he have a steady gal?”

  “Never said anything about a girl.”

  “How was he that night you all went to Borland’s? He let loose?”

  “He hooped and hollered during the floor show, sure.”

  “I mean after the show. Help himself to dessert?”

  As in, hire a prossy. I couldn’t remember—I’d gotten drunk awful quick and had stumbled off to the shabby bungalows behind the club for a girl of my own right after the first strip tease.

  “M’sure he did,” I answered Terrance.

  The telephone rang. I leaned across the desk to take the call; it was Durkin.

  After listening for a moment, I said, “Sure, we’ll come by,” and hung up. “He’s got the prints from the murder scene. So much for dragging his heels.”

  “Seems awful eager-beaver now, huh?”

  Good point. Night before, Durkin was sullen, pissed off we’d snatched his case. On the phone just now, he’d been downright chatty. See you here at the precinct in a little while, okay? he’d said by way of goodbye. Like he wanted to make sure we were on our way.

  “Shit, he’s going to the coroner’s without us,” I said.

  Terrance said, grinning, “Let’s head him off at the pass.”

  THE OFFICE OF DR. MURRAY SPERBER, THE CORONER, WAS AT NINETEENTH and I, SE. We drove over in one of the O.N.I.’s dilapidated ’38 Chevrolet sedans and presented our identification cards to the lobby clerk, who took us to the autopsy lab. I stared at Skerrill’s pale, nude, gutted body laid out on a metal examining table. The sight made me queasy. Just the night before, I’d been crouched over this very same corpse. But Skerrill had been clothed then, lying crumpled and bloody on cobblestones, sure, but still recognizable as a man. Not so this naked, cut-up mannequin. I averted my eyes, scanned the lab. Fortunately, my partner didn’t notice; he was trying to get the coroner’s attention.

  “Who the hell are you?” Sperber asked, finally looking up.

  “Office of Naval Intelligence,” Terrance replied. He flicked his hand toward the body. “He bought it on Navy Yard property, so it’s our investigation.”

  “Durki
n must love that,” Sperber grunted, turning his attention back to the table. He looked to be about forty years old, stocky, with powerful forearms and hands. His bald head, fringed in gray hair clipped short, glistened with sweat beneath the hot glare of the overhead light.

  “So how many times was he—” I began, but he cut me off.

  “A moment, please.”

  Or several long minutes. Terrance and I drifted toward the door. The examining-room floor, decked in small white diagonal tiles, canted to a grated drain. Bell-shaped lamps dangled directly over each of the four metal tables mounted on cylindrical bases. Tall cabinets with glass-paned doors lined the opposite wall, medical instruments lay pell-mell on a broad wooden counter. A propaganda poster warned of the dangers of not car-pooling. When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler! Someone had taped a cutout from a photograph on the head of the driver. Looked like Sperber, but I wasn’t about to walk across the lab to find out.

  A metallic clatter, followed by a loud sigh, caught our attention.

  “All right, that’s the third one,” Sperber said, more to the corpse than to us.

  We took that as an invitation to return.

  “Third bullet?” asked Terrance.

  “Third wound.”

  “Shot three times—where?” I asked.

  “See that gray ring?” Pointing to Skerrill’s left thigh. “Your victim’s first wound.” We leaned forward warily. Faintly visible in the white flesh, a dingy circle, didn’t look like anything more than a scratch.

  “That’s a bullet wound?” I exclaimed.

  “You ever handled a homicide before?” Sperber asked.

  Terrance saved me, quipping, “We’re O.N.I., mostly we see drownings.”

  No laugh, no smile.

  “So your shooter plugs him in the thigh,” Sperber went on matter-of-factly.

  “How do you know that was the first bullet?” asked Terrance.

  “Because of the angle of the second wound.” He pointed to another grayish circle, this one just below the rib cage on the left side. “That’s about midway on his torso, see?” We nodded. “Look where the bullet comes out.” He lifted Skerrill by the shoulders and we peered at his back: the bullet’s exit, ragged and much larger than its entry, was just above the buttocks.