As a precaution against being tailed, I switched buses, doubling back on Fourteenth Street for a few blocks, and took a roundabout way to my flat. So far, I’d seen no signs of a shadow since starting my job at H & H, but I had to be sure. Franklin D. was right at the door when I came in, mewling to beat the band. I hadn’t been able to feed him since I’d gone to see Griffin Crieve two days earlier, but there were still mice in the walls and, in a pinch, he could use the flap in the back door to go scrounge in the alley. Maybe he was just lonely.
“Why don’t you get yourself a girlfriend?” I asked him. “She’s welcome to live here with you.”
He looked at me as if he expected me to start making cat-sense any second. When I didn’t, he gave me a stern squawk and bumped my calf.
“Awright, awright, I hear you.”
I went into the kitchen, opened up two cans of Spam, and heaped the hash into his well-licked dish. Topped off his water bowl. Maybe Kleist, my landlord, could feed him for a while. But I didn’t want Kleist to know I was away. If someone came around asking about Lieutenant j.g. Ellis Voigt, U.S.N., the less Kleist knew, the better. I lit a cigarette, wondered, Could Liv stay here? Flicked that idea away with the first ash. Talk about reckless! I’d have to lie to Liv about why I was away, I’d compromise the investigation, Kleist would evict me for having a subletter.
I hurriedly changed into Ellis Voigt’s clothes—creased brown trousers, La Playa two-tone sport shirt, and Russetan wingtips—and left by the back door while Franklin D. was still bent over his dish. Checked the Timex: ten to nine. I was twenty minutes late, but then, had Liv ever been on time? Hell, I didn’t even know if she’d show.
But there she was, sitting in a booth. I shot Gerald a tropical sunrise of a smile, he grunted an acknowledgment.
“Buck Mulligan? For real?” Liv greeted me. Looking exquisite in a gun-blue belted dress with half-sleeves and sharp collar points.
“Figured it out, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly how I pictured a Martello tower,” she said, gesturing at the brightly lit diner.
“Well, D.C.’s no Dublin, either, is it?”
“It sure isn’t. Thought you’d never read Ulysses.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Well, when I told you I’d finally gotten the book from the library, you mighta said ‘I’ve read that.’ Wouldn’t most people?”
“Am I most people, Liv?” Trying out my tropical sunrise smile on her.
She laughed, flicking a lock of hair away from her brow, and for a moment I felt happier than I had in weeks. Months, even.
“Besides, I didn’t want to give away the ending,” I said, taking her hand and squeezing it.
“Don’t start now—I just started the last chapter.”
“So, Liv.”
“El?”
“How will you be?”
“Ever-wonderful.”
“That a word?”
“Is now.”
“Hungry?”
“No. You?”
“Could do dessert.”
“Share?”
“A’course.” I caught the attention of Gerald, who was hovering nearby, rearranging shakers.
“Yes, you want?” he asked, still bent over a table.
“Banana cream pie.”
“Two?”
“Just one.”
“Coffee?”
“Yeah, please.”
He nodded briskly and strode away.
Liv asked, “What’re you reading these days, Professor Mulligan?”
“Pulp.”
“True Detective?”
“Close, very close.”
“What’s your favorite story?”
“This one about a boy who grows up on the waterfront, runs away to join the Navy.”
“Like you, huh?”
“Only in Chicago, we called it the harbor, not the waterfront.”
Our pie and coffee came. I slid into the booth next to Liv, so we could share our dessert side-by-side, like two love-struck teens. Warmth of her leg, rustle of her dress, the way she tipped cream into her coffee and stirred once, the dainty press of her fork into the soft meringue—I could watch Liv do nothing special all day long and still feel like a million bucks. Just like with Delphine, in Chicago, all those years ago.
“You’re due for a visit to the library,” Liv said.
“If only I could find the time.”
“You have time for me, right?”
“A’course.”
“So make a date with me.”
“Didn’t I just?”
Rolled her eyes. “Another one. And I’ll take you to the library. For that date.”
“And find me something better to read?”
She nodded excitedly, like a child who’s just been asked if she likes the circus. “Game?”
More than you could ever know, I thought. But as long as I was using the library as a dead drop, I couldn’t set foot in it as Ellis Voigt.
“How about Lowdermilk’s instead?” I said, referring to the downtown bookshop.
“S’long as I get to pick your book, sure.”
“Natch. So tell me about Ulysses.”
She set down her fork and told me about her struggle to get through the chapter set in the hospital. About how she read it over and over, hoping it would make sense. About how she finally went to the library in search of assistance.
“Went through two dictionaries, El—neither were any help!” she exclaimed.
My stomach tightened, my heart beat faster. What the hell had I been thinking, telling Terrance to use the library as our dead drop. Liv was there all the time—for Christ’s sake, I’d met her there. If I ran into her while posing as Ted Barston. . . . What other bone-headed mistakes was I making? I glanced away from Liv, still happily telling her story, and surveyed the diner, looking at other patrons, my panic growing. The elderly man bent over a bowl of soup at the counter—had he come in after me? The middle-aged couple eating casserole at a nearby table—were they watching us? If I couldn’t pull off being Ted Barston, if I blew this case—
“Liv, I’m sorry, I gotta go.” I hurriedly kissed her on the cheek and lurched out of the booth, tossing some bills to Gerald on my way out. I didn’t dare look back at Liv. Hustled home, frantically changed into Barston’s clothes. Straight out the back door, ignoring Franklin D.’s unhappy meowing, taking alleys and backways to get out of the neighborhood. I didn’t think Liv would come to my flat after the way I’d left, but I had to avoid seeing her, had to get to the Jefferson Club, pronto. As long as no one had followed me, as long as I didn’t make another mistake, the investigation was safe. I could only hope Liv would give me a chance to explain why I’d run out. Now I regretted kissing her as I fled. An empty gesture, obscene even, worse than a Judas kiss.
Couldn’t worry about all that now, had to focus on being Ted Barston. I’m not Voigt, I’m Barston, I thought. Liv’s not my girl, Miriam is. What was she doing tonight, I wondered. Too late to call on her, of course, but thinking about a date with Miriam that might have been helped me forget about the debacle with Liv. I could have taken Miriam to the movies after our Italian dinner. Sure, Barston was supposed to be broke, but Miriam wouldn’t ask questions, wouldn’t even wonder where he got the money to take her out—and I had plenty of money to fund a few decent dates for Barston and Miriam. Could have asked about which beauty school she wanted to attend, or about her folks, or the dress she had on layaway at Woodie’s—hell, anything at all so long as it had to do with her life. She was one of those girls, you ran across them all the time—clerks, stenos, waitresses—who were expected to listen, not talk, who were expected to follow instructions, not ask questions. Ask them how they were doing and they’d say, “Just dandy, sir,” no matter how miserable or lonely or confused they felt. Miriam yearned for attention, wanted to fall in love. So what if her dream was a cliché, one shared with countless other unimaginative girls her age? It was hers, she had the sam
e right to be as happy as Liv. Lieutenant Ellis Voigt needed her as a source, he was using her; but that didn’t mean Ellis Voigt, who was, for all his flaws, still a decent man, couldn’t ensure that the character he was playing treated her right. As it was, Barston was going to beat a hasty departure from Miriam’s life the instant the investigation ended—the least he could do in the meantime was give her some happiness while he was around.
Thinking about Miriam, and mulling ways Barston could be nice to her, calmed me down. My pulse had stopped racing by the time I got to Ninth Street. Just need a full night’s sleep, I told myself, and that sounded like a simple, good idea. Until I saw Terrance sitting in our Chrysler, parked two blocks away from the Jefferson Club.
CHAPTER 17
JIG’S UP, I THOUGHT AS I WALKED TOWARD THE BEAT-UP CAR—Terrance had seen me with Liv. Instead of anger, relief. I wasn’t cut out for undercover work, was I? My successes so far—passing myself off as Barston, getting a job at H & H, cultivating Miriam as a source—were flukes. If I was a natural, like Logan Skerrill, I never would have made a date with Liv. Never would have used the library as a dead drop. Terrance had no choice but to report me to Commander Paslett, who’d dress me down, berate me, abuse me, humiliate me. I’d be demoted and exiled, probably to a rust-bucket tanker in the Pacific. I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, and drew the Old Gold I was smoking down to my fingertips. I was washed up, but I was determined to follow tradecraft one last time.
Walked past the car, only glancing at the man in the driver’s seat, as any passerby would. Continued down Ninth Street and turned west on E Street, stride casual but steady, the walk of a man headed home, while checking for signs of a tail. Dropped a cigarette so I could look behind me, used the reflections of shop windows to check angles. As I passed the statue of Casimir Pulaski, just before reaching Pennsylvania Avenue, Terrance slowly drove by. I dipped my chin, to let him know I hadn’t been followed, and he pulled to the curb. I quickly got in on the passenger side, he drove away, neither of us spoke. On E Street I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t confess first, that I’d let my partner make the first move.
“We got a serious problem,” Terrance finally said, his voice taut.
“I know,” I answered firmly.
“You do?” Surprised.
“Well, you wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” He smacked the dashboard lighter down and fished a cigarette out of his jacket pocket. “Where the hell you been, anyways? I been sitting up on that fleabag hotel for more than an hour.”
So he hadn’t seen me with Liv! All my doubts vanished, the self-recriminations disappeared.
I said, “I was on a date with Miriam, she’s the receptionist at H & H. Got something juicy, too.”
“Yeah, like what?”
“Tell me our problem first.”
The lighter popped, Terrance reached. He pressed the glowing end to his smoke and inhaled. I took the lighter from him and fired up an Old Gold.
“Goddamned Bureau, that’s our problem.” As in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“They know about Barston—they know about me?!”
“Not yet. But it’s still the mother of all snafus, let me tell you.”
And tell me he did, after parking in the lot of the George Washington University Hospital, a short drive up Pennsylvania. (Good place to talk unnoticed—who pays attention to other cars when they’re rushing to see a sick relative?) After our meeting at the billiards parlor, Paslett had assigned a young civilian employee, a woman named Frances Traub, to tail Nadine Silva. I knew her slightly. She was about twenty-two, as fresh-faced as they come, round cheeks, curly brown hair.
“I was against that idea,” Terrance said, shaking his head.
“How come?”
He glared at me. “Besides that she’s a broad? And that she’s never done undercover work?”
“B-Three ran her on an op last year and she did fine.”
“Did I mention she’s a broad?”
“All right, all right, what happened?”
“Paslett gave Traub the description you gave us of Silva, then let her off the leash. Sent her out, just like that.”
“So Silva made her? I tried to tell you she’d be tough to tail—”
“I know, I know, we went over all a’that, Traub said she got it. But it wasn’t Silva who made her.”
“Who, for chrissake?”
Traub, it turned out, had done nothing wrong. She had set up across the street from H & H and waited for Silva to leave, which she did around six-thirty, while I was at dinner with Miriam. Traub had followed her up Fifteenth Street, to a druggist’s, where Silva bought chocolate and the latest issue of Collier’s, then to Scott Circle. Here, Silva sat on a bench, read her magazine, ate her candy bar. Might have been a drop (leave the magazine, folded, on the bench, or drop the brown paper drugstore bag in a trashcan) or a meeting (contact sits down, asks for a light), but no, Silva took everything with her when she got up and walked to the nearest bus stop on Massachusetts Avenue. Traub boarded and took a seat several rows behind Silva. When Silva disembarked at Union Station, Traub stayed on for another stop, just like she’d been trained, keeping an eye out the bus’s rear window.
After Traub hopped off, a man in a suit stepped out of a parked sedan. Said he was lost, asked her for directions. Traub told him that she was late for an appointment, couldn’t help him. That’s when he leaned in close to whisper that she was under arrest and better not make a scene.
“Lemme guess,” I interrupted. “Guy in the suit had a partner, and they both got a boss named John Edgar.”
“Gee, how’d you guess?”
“So the Bureau’s on to H & H. Now we know they’re Reds for sure.” Which I already knew, but since my visit to that loon Griffin Crieve hadn’t been authorized, I kept that detail to myself.
“Yeah, and thanks to your little Miss Traub, now the Bureau knows we’re on to H & H, too!”
“It’s not her fault, Terrance—how was she supposed to know the F.B.I. was following Silva the same time she was?”
“She shoulda seen ’em,” he grumbled.
I let that ride. “What’d they do with her, the Bureau boys?”
“Hell, they thought she was a Red, too! Took her in, worked her over but good. Yelled at her about the Espionage Act, told her she’d fry in the chair if she didn’t tell the truth about why she was tailing Silva.”
“But why would one Red tail another?”
“They weren’t trying to make sense, just looking to scare the daylights out of her. Finally, after two hours’a her telling ’em she’s just a lowly clerk for O.N.I., she’s got no idea what they’re talking about, they thought to call Paslett and check her story out. Dumb bastards.”
The Bureau knowing we were looking at H & H was a serious problem. No doubt, a memorandum of the Bureau’s interrogation was on its way to J. Edgar Hoover’s swish sidekick Tolson, who lived with the director. Those two would stay up well past their bedtime, plotting a way to short-circuit our investigation. But I had a much more pressing concern.
“You said the Bureau doesn’t know about me—yet. Tell me about that ‘yet.’”
“So these two clowns—Slater and Reid are their names, sound like a coupla shysters, don’t they?—anyway, they call Paslett and he tells ’em to bring Traub to him. Commander calls me, we’re waiting in his office. Those two stroll in like the King of Prussia—”
“Jesus, Terrance, skip the play-by-play!”
“Okay, okay, hold your horses. So they read us the riot act. Whatta we think we’re doing, sending a pup like Traub after a known communist, they’ve been watching Nadine Silva and H & H, how dare we bull our way into their case. Know what the commander says?”
“Who’s Nadine Silva?”
Terrance gaped at me. “How the hell d’you know that?”
“Just a guess. But when it comes to slow-waltzing the Bureau, no one’s better t
han the old man.”
“Got that right. Well, I just about fell outta my chair. Shoulda seen Slater and Reid—that question took the crease right offa their trousers.”
“And Traub, she hadn’t given anything up while they were questioning her?”
“Nope. All she told ’em was, she was on a training exercise, she was supposed to follow a stranger she picked out on a sidewalk. Paslett backed her up. He musta given her that story to use in case anything went wrong.” He added, grudgingly, “I guess for a broad she did okay.”
“This Slater and Reid, they didn’t believe Paslett, did they?”
“Hell, no. But what could they say? They got nothing to prove otherwise. And once they realized they’d just told the head of B-Seven, O.N.I., that they’re investigating H & H as a communist cell, they clammed up tight and skedaddled.”
That was good to hear. Maybe the memorandum headed Hoover’s way wasn’t such a problem. Slater and Reid would slant their report to cover their blunder of tipping off the O.N.I. But one way or another, Hoover would learn about our investigation.
“So they don’t know anything about me? Yet.”
“Right. But you know they’re gonna turn us upside down to find out what we’re doing.”
“They got your name, that means they’re gonna identify me as your partner, and it’ll take ’em all of fifty-nine seconds to see I’ve disappeared—”
“Don’t worry, Paslett’s two steps ahead. Soon as those two clowns left and he dismissed Traub, we cooked up a doozy of a scheme.”
“Do tell.”
“All right, you’re gonna love this. We pulled your jacket and yanked everything out for the last two months. Paslett’s got his pets in Seven-R typing up back-dated field reports, orders, transit documents, everything to show you’re in Iceland, at the N.O.B. at Hvalf—hell, I can’t pronounce the rest of it.”
“Iceland!”
“Yeah, haven’t you always wanted to go?” He pushed the dash lighter in again.
The Dead Don't Bleed: A Novel Page 14
