My destination was Capitol Hill, but I needed to get cleaned up—shave, haircut, change of clothes—before I set foot in the vaunted halls of Congress. I headed south on Seventh, my gait a bit too stiff, like a drunk trying to walk sober. I stopped in front of a burleycue theater and gaped at the cheesecake posters, using the glass case’s reflection to spot my tail. He was directly across the street, crouching to tie an already properly laced wingtip. Tsk, tsk—didn’t they teach you anything at the Academy? My plan was to kite him along Seventh Street, to the amusement arcade between H and G Streets. The barrel vaulted arcade had a wide mall lined with shooting galleries, bean bag tosses, pinball machines, and countless kiosks hawking junk for tourists. Noise, crowds, flashing lights, kids underfoot—I could lose Boy G-man by ducking down one of the myriad side aisles and out an unmarked exit. But then a tout sidled up and asked if I wanted a bite of the real thing—suddenly I had a much better plan.
“How much, hey?” I asked.
“Ten bucks, plus the room.” He was a skinny guy, with a long nose and an oversized jaw like a horse’s, baring teeth begging for a trip to the dentist.
“Okay, but dare’s a joe across da street, looks like vice? He gonna be a problem?”
Horseface picked out Boy G-man immediately and grinned maliciously. “Nah, he ain’t gonna be a problem—this is the last he’s gonna see’a us. C’mon.”
He deftly turned into a narrow passage running alongside the theater’s exterior wall. I followed. He pushed open a gate, veered left, and knocked in code on the theater’s steel-plated service door: two long, two short, a drum of his fingers. The door lurched open, we ducked in, the door closed. I never saw the doorman—it was dark, and Horseface didn’t pause, leading me up a metal staircase and down a dimly lit, narrow corridor. He opened a door to another hallway. Just before we entered, I heard a banging on the theater door. We could just hear Boy G-man’s shout: “Hey, open up in there!”
Horseface cackled. “C’mon, almost there.”
This corridor led into the adjoining building, which on Seventh Street had the edifice of a rooming house. Maybe the first two floors were rooms for let, but the third floor was all prossies, guarded by a rock-solid slab of man who cried ex-boxer. Pouchy eyes, cauliflower ears, fists hanging from his wrists like wrecking balls.
“Tell Tiny whattya want, pay him, enjoy,” and with that Horseface pounded down the staircase we’d just come up, his work done.
Tiny, natch—that kind of irony passed for humor in the underworld.
“Any requests?” Tiny grunted, taking me in with a practiced, bored eyeover.
“Nope, just a clean girl and a nice quickie.”
“A boy to make his mother proud,” Tiny deadpanned, holding out his massive palm. “Fifteen bucks, knock on door four.”
“Must be awful nice rooms,” I said, peeling bills off my fast-dwindling roll.
“Class acts deserve classy digs,” Tiny said with a straight face.
Behind Door 4, I found a brunette who looked about nineteen, the teenage chubbiness still in her cheeks. She wore a black shift with lacy hems that clung to sturdy thighs and plump breasts. She was reclined on a sagging mattress in a steel bedframe, knees bent, head resting on her palm, reading a magazine. She looked up without interest.
“Hey lover, where you been?” she cracked.
“Comedians, all’a you,” I replied.
“I’m Jean.”
“John. But you already knew dat, hey?”
“Leave the jokes to the pros, honey—easier on all’a us that way.” She straightened up and tossed the magazine to a nightstand with a cracked top. I’d expected True Romances—wrong: Time. She had a pleasant face stuccoed with lipstick, mascara, and rouge. Eyebrows plucked into perfect arcs and manicured nails were the House’s way of telling tricks that the girls were clean. She reached for a bottle of lotion, tapped a dollop out, and worked it into her palms. The sound was unsettling, like the suction of mud on your boots.
Tell her my kink was I wanted to hear stories? Act nervous, make excuses, wait for her to say S’allright, happens to all good boys? All sorts of angles I could take to avoid banging this prossy, but I couldn’t afford attention, couldn’t risk a scene. If I acted strangely, Jean might signal for the heave-ho, and Boy G-man was likely still sniffing Seventh Street, desperate to pick up my scent. I needed to give him time enough to realize he’d screwed up and had to call for help, then make my exit. And the easiest way to gain time enough was to—
“Gotta undress yourself, lover—this ain’t a full-service station,” Jean said, her eyes narrowing. I caught her glance at the hotel bell on the nightstand. One ding, and we’d get a no-knock visit from Tiny.
“Then just the usual,” I answered, unbuckling my belt. Dis is Barston’s treat, I told myself. I hadn’t paid for it since I met Liv, wasn’t about to start now; but Teddy, he had a lot of lays to make up for his time in the brig, didn’t he? I clung to that question as Jean pulled up the hem of her shift with a practiced turn of her wrists.
BOY G-MAN HAD VANISHED WHEN I TOOK MY LEAVE. I FLAGGED A HACK and had him take me north to Massachusetts and on to Dupont Circle. By the time reinforcements arrived from the Bureau and started their grid search, I’d be long gone. I told the driver to drop me off at the intersection with New Hampshire, then I cut across the plaza inside the circle. Kids ran about, playing tag and tussling as their mothers laughed, talked, smoked. Buses disgorged scores of office workers who fanned out across the plaza to finish the trudge home. There was a little barbershop tucked away on Hopkins, a half-block more alley than street, where I could get cleaned up before heading to the Hill. I’d never been there, nobody would recognize me.
A shave never felt so good. I closed my eyes and let the tension ease from my shoulders as the barber ratcheted the chair back. The steaming hot towel leached out the rest of the rye, the mentholated shaving cream cleared my sinuses. As the razor scraped a careful, slow path across my cheeks and jaw, I imagined all my troubles swirling away with the stubble-flecked cream. Paslett’s persistence, my dreams of Delphine, Himmel’s watchful gaze, Greene’s pestering, Silva’s scolding, Miriam’s cloying, Slater’s sadistic grin—all of it gone, down the drain forever. Let my thoughts drift, and drift up, a daydream as high as the sky, starting with a headline. Naval Lieutenant Cracks Red Spy Ring Wide Open. . . . Sure, I could be the source, the leak, could think of a way to get it to Drew Pearson or another columnist without leaving fingerprints. That kind of story breaks, I’m ruined for future undercover work. Leverage that, right, wheedle Paslett into fixing a decommission. Sprung from the Navy, a free man, I can go to the South Pacific with Liv! We can layover in Chicago—hell, we’d have to change trains there anyway—and visit my family. Stay a few days, maybe a week. Even make it a surprise, not let them know I was coming and with a guest to boot. The jubilation on Mom’s face when I came through the front door would be the best present I ever gave her—we hadn’t seen each other, I hadn’t seen Pop or Eddie either, in two years. Mom and Pop would love Liv. And strolling once-familiar streets and the old neighborhood with her, maybe, just maybe, I’d finally shake myself free of the dreams of Delphine, shake off the chains that—
“Just a trim?” the barber asked my reflection in the mirror, his scissors upheld.
“No, buzz it down,” I told him. My haircut was reg, but I’d always left enough up top to comb a part. I wasn’t sure why, but now I wanted it short, right down to the scalp. I didn’t think Barston would mind.
I tipped the barber fifty cents and walked to Connecticut, headed south until I found a second-hand clothing store. My clothes were rumpled and soiled—I couldn’t go to the Hill looking like a bum. I bought gray-checked trousers and a white dress shirt; the owner let me change in the back. A block from the Mayflower Hotel, a Negro shoe shine spiffed up my brogans. Then I flagged a hack and was on my way to the Senate Office Building to see a gal named Teresa Herndon.
SHE WAS ONE OF THE FI
RST PEOPLE I’D MET IN D.C., AT A DANCE sponsored by the Women’s Battalion No. 1. Teresa had come from California to work in the office of Senator Hiram Johnson. May 1942: the Japs had just taken Corregidor and thousands of GIs, and for all the crepe, punch, and music, the social felt like a wake. Couples danced listlessly, clutching each other as if they might collapse, like those marathon dancers from the Roaring Twenties. I’d milled in a corner, rolling an empty punch glass in my hands, thinking an awful lot about the half-bottle of whiskey back in my flat.
“Instead of a band, they oughta just have a fat man with a fiddle,” a short brunette said at my side. Tight curls falling to her shoulders, enviable tan, resonant voice.
“Nero,” I said.
“Rome’s burning, isn’t it?”
“Tonight, feels like it.”
She thrust her hand out for a hearty shake. “Teresa.”
“Ellis.”
“Had enough fun yet?”
“You mean it’s already started?” I did my best to look mortified. She bought it, for a half-second, then grinned.
We ditched the dance, wandering streets lined with rowhouses until we ended up on the Taft Bridge, looking down at the silver shimmer of Rock Creek. Found a diner on Calvert Street and drank too many cups of coffee, talking easily and freely, somehow avoiding The War. Around two-thirty we both yawned at the same time and broke into laughter. I walked her to her boarding house; we parted without a kiss. Had ourselves a three-week romance, something between a fling and going steady, two new arrivals helping each other settle into the boomtown. Teresa’s sense of humor eased the stress of my training at the Funhouse, she loved to go out dancing, she ate like a lumberjack and didn’t put on a pound. Yet we ran out of things to talk about, responsibilities piled up on her at the Capitol, the Funhouse kept my hours irregular. When she asked if I wanted to play tennis—she was a girl’s state champion runner-up—I knew we were through. No bitterness in the split, call it a drifting away. Think we both sensed The War was leading us down two different paths, hers ending with a husband, house, babies, mine ending just about anywhere but at a hearthstone.
I found Teresa in the front office of Johnson’s suite.
“Ellis?” With uncertainty, from behind an ornately carved desk.
The haircut, right—and I was out of uniform. Also, getting beat up by two G-men and taking a tumble with a prossy had probably put a different color on my cheeks.
“Hey, Teresa.” Startled by my own voice. The longer I talked like Ted Barston, the more natural his accent became.
“What brings you by?” She wore a crisp white blouse with shiny black buttons and wide cuffs. She’d cut her hair and set the curls to lie tight against her forehead.
“Time for a cup’a joe, maybe a slice of pie?”
She looked down at a stack of carbons. “Hate to be rude, Ellis, but we’re awful busy today.”
“It’s business, won’t take long. Scout’s honor.” I waggled my fore and middle fingers.
“You were never a Boy Scout.”
“Yeah, but the Navy’s made me clean and reverent.”
“Okay, Ellis.” Smiling just like that night. “Gimme a minute.”
She went into a rear office, returned wearing a wide-brimmed hat and clutching a glossy black purse. We left by the Constitution Avenue doors and went to a diner a half-block away. Teresa shot me a curious look as I steered us past several empty booths up front. No way I was sitting by a window. I made sure I was facing the door. A heavyset waitress ambled over, we ordered coffee and the shortcake.
“O.N.I. got something’a interest coming through Senator Johnson’s committee?” Teresa asked, looking relieved when I shook my head.
“What can you tell me about the Senate committee investigating war contracts—the one Truman used to chair?” Call it instinct, call it a hunch—hell, call it a stab in the dark, but the thick books with the black covers in Kudlower’s flat weren’t run-of-the-mill government publications. The Government Printing Office used cheap beige cardstock to bind reports like the one Kudlower had on the Interior Department’s appropriations. I’d seen those black covers once before, when a lawyer from that Senate committee I’d just asked Teresa about had visited the Navy Building.
“What d’you want to know?” She sounded guarded.
“Got this fraud case, might connect to something the committee’s investigating.” Casual, noncommittal.
“A friend’a mine works in the office of the new chairman, so I’ve heard a few things.”
“Who’s the new chairman?”
“James Mead, of New York.”
The cake and coffee came, we stirred sugar into our cups, took a few bites of the cake.
“What kinda staff’s this Mead got for his investigations?” I asked.
“Awful small. Wanna say four lawyers and two investigators, something like that.” Giving me a quizzical look.
“It’s the investigators we might have to call. Know anything about them?”
“One used to be in the F.B.I.; Flanagan, think his name is.”
Surprise, surprise.
“And the other guy?” I asked.
“A staffer who used to work for Senator La Follette, of Wisconsin.”
“Know his name, too?”
“Kurlander—no, Kudlower, that’s it. I’ve only met him once.”
Ditto the surprise. She snuck a look at her watch.
“Just one other thing, Teresa—I was wondering, can you tell me how the committee comes around on an investigation?”
“Oh, that’s easy—people come to them. Whistleblowers, unhappy employees, competitors who lost the bid. They probably spend most’a their time going through mailbags and taking calls.”
“At some point, Flanagan and this other guy have to go in the field.”
“Right. And the lawyers usually go with. Bust in waving subpoenas, followed by movers with boxes to cart out all the records—quite dramatic.” She finished her cake, pushed the plate aside.
Time to fish. “But with the war winding down, the committee must not be too busy.”
She leaned over the tabletop. “This is a ‘Can’t remember who’ conversation, right?”
“A’course. Matter of fact, if anyone asks, you never saw me.”
She nodded absently, as if I was joking. I didn’t tell her I was supposed to be in Iceland.
“Right before Roosevelt picked up Truman as his running mate,” she told me, “there was lotsa talk on the Hill that Truman had stumbled on something huge.”
“Yeah?”
“Missing money—and lots of it.”
“How much?”
“Millions, fifty, sixty, maybe more.”
“Where’d the trail lead?”
“That’s the thing—no one could follow the money all the way. Came through the appropriations bills and hearings, but then just disappeared. Like down a black hole.”
“Fifty million dollars and no one can find it?”
“S’what I hear. But you know how the rumor mill works. Probably it was five million that just got some compound interest as the story passed around.”
“Mead must not be the bulldog Truman was, to give up looking.”
Teresa shook her head.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Okay, more rumor. The committee sent one of their investigators to New Mexico to dig around—it was their one solid lead.”
“He find anything?”
“I don’t know. But I haven’t heard anything more, and you know if they found the money it’d be front-page news.” She glanced at her watch again.
I took the cue. Dropped a dollar bill on the table and walked her back.
“Thanks, Teresa,” I said at the Senate Office Building entrance.
“Yeah, sure.”
We smiled at one another awkwardly. I pulled open the massive door for her.
Just before she passed through the vestibule, I asked, “Do you know which investigator they se
nt to New Mexico—the F.B.I. agent, or this Kudlower fella?”
She thought for a moment.
“Kudlower.”
CHAPTER 27
IF I WAS LUCKY, I HAD ALL NIGHT BEFORE THE BUREAU’S BLOODHOUNDS picked up my trail, so long as I stayed away from the Jefferson Club, H & H, and Miriam. Beyond that, Slater and Reid hadn’t the foggiest about Ted Barston’s pals and haunts. The more they looked, the less they’d find—because until Paslett brought him to life, Barston didn’t exist in Washington, D.C. For sure, the agents would get suspicious after a while, they’d smell a plant, a hothouse creation. Black orchids, one of my Funhouse trainers had called concocted identities like the one I was using. They didn’t grow in the wild, you could only produce them in a laboratory. Once the Bureau boys figured out Barston was a cover, it wouldn’t take them long to trace ol’ Teddy Boy back to Paslett—they already knew O.N.I. was poking around.
Terrance, Liv. I needed to make the most of my free hours to brief my partner and do everything I could to salvage what I had with Liv. If she showed at the Lotus. After the way I’d left her in the lurch at the Little Palace, I couldn’t much blame her if she’d ripped up my telegram. Awful hard to believe I’d sent it just that morning. Ted and I, we’d been through a lot in the last few hours.
The Dead Don't Bleed: A Novel Page 21
