I said, “Liv, about what we talked about at the club, about you going to the Pacific.”
“Oh, El, let’s not—”
“No, it’s all right, I’m not going to say what you think.”
No reply.
“What you said,” I continued cautiously, “about taking the plunge—I get it, I really do.”
“Are you sure, El?” She slid up and effortlessly turned, crossing her legs as she faced me. Her hair lay wet against her neck, rivulets traced her collarbone and chest.
“Yes,” I answered, and left it at that. Yes, I get that you’re not going to plan your move, you’re not going to pick a date and book a ticket, or even pick a place. One day, you’re going to take the plunge, head west to San Francisco or Los Angeles, maybe Hawai’i—wherever will get you where you want to be. And if I’m going to go with you, I have to plunge, too.
“All right, El.” She reached for my hands, squeezed them.
“But Liv, there’s something I gotta tell you now. It’s not about the Pacific, something else.” I thought about how much I’d risked to even be here with her. And I thought about the morning at my flat, when I’d told her about Delphine. How much could one more revelation hurt me? The wrong way to think about it, I realized. Could that revelation help me? Exposure a huge risk, strictly verboten—“layaway suicide,” a Funhouse trainer had called it, trusting an outsider. The first payment, the first “tell no one,” comes hard and slow, you’ll resist, but then when nothing bad happens right away, the second, third, fourth payments come fast and easy. “If you can’t keep your mouth shut, get out of intelligence work before someone shuts it for you,” our trainer had said ominously. We’d all nodded obediently, but none of us—not me, not Logan Skerrill, not one of the other handpicked recruits—had believed we’d ever have trouble keeping mum. We were the best of the best, right, eager to be spies in our nation’s service, itching for skulduggery, braced for adventure. Maybe that’s why my lips had loosened, my discipline had slackened—I wanted out. I wanted to live free, like Liv had been telling me since the night we met. Just tell her, take the plunge, see how it all—
“This something else, could you call it a secret?” Liv asked quietly.
“Yes.”
She turned her hands, so that both our wrists faced up. “What color is blood, El?”
“Red.”
“Uh-uh. Blue.” She dipped her chin at the veins visible under our wet skin.
“Only till you bleed.”
“But if you never get cut, your blood stays blue.”
“Awful hard, going through life never getting cut.”
“Oh, I know—believe me, I know. But keeping our secrets blue, that’s something we can all do, if we really want.”
CHAPTER 30
SO I DIDN’T TELL LIV MY SECRET, I KEPT IT BLUE, JUST LIKE SHE’D said. Sounded silly, her advice, a folk saying that smart people would make fun of. But I already knew enough smart folks—Liv was the only wise one I knew.
At seven the next morning, I left her sleeping peacefully in the Willard’s king-size bed, her hair mussed gently on a plump pillow. I hadn’t told her the F.B.I. would soon question her about one Ted Barston. If I warned her, Slater and Reid would see it in her face the instant she answered the door, no matter how much she tried to act like she had no idea why they were there. As for her reaction when they showed her a photograph of me as Ted Barston, I just had to trust that Liv would immediately make the connection between the secret she thought I’d wanted to tell her and the reason the F.B.I. wanted to talk to her. She was quick-witted and unimpressed by authority—she wouldn’t flinch when she saw my picture. Or so I hoped. If she did crack, if she blurted out But that’s El!, I might, just might, still have enough time to finish my work before Slater and Reid traced what Liv told them back to me. But only if I got busy early, and a little luck came my way.
I walked to a diner and filled up on coffee, eggs, bacon, and hash browns as I read all about the Germans’ surrender. I was lucky to get a paper, copies were selling so fast—early birds were slapping nickels down on the newsstand counter like rubes at a ring toss. A sea of ink had been spilled for the four-inch headline: Krauts Call It Quits; Japs Fight On. The copy itself was predictable, packed with quotes from high hats and brass, the usual suspects from Congress, the man on the street. Easy to miss on page six was a two-column story about the Japs’ 32nd Army’s counteroffensive on Okinawa. It had failed, Buckner’s Tenth Army was preparing to punch back, heavy casualties expected. The V-E celebration was going to end unhappily in a lot of marines’ and GIs’ homes when the Western Union boy came knocking.
I didn’t spend much time wondering how the German surrender would affect the hush-hush weapons program in New Mexico. General Groves wouldn’t let up, not one second. If anything, he’d put the eggheads on double-time. Whatever was being built in the desert, the Pentagon wanted it ready before the Japs called it quits. To test it, justify the cost, let the world know what Uncle Sam had—however you cut it, we weren’t spending millions of dollars for something to go on the shelf. Which meant the Russians had to be getting antsy, too, pushing Himmel to wrap up his operation.
Paid my tab, left a big tip. Only twenty-two dollars remained of the two hundred Terrance had given me, but that didn’t worry me. If all went well, I wasn’t going to be Ted Barston much longer. I considered coming into H & H through the alley but after losing me twice, the Bureau would have men watching every approach. What the hell, I thought. The day he’d arrived, Barston had strutted in like a rooster, he might as well go in like one on his last day.
About a block from H & H, I saw Miriam on the northwest corner of Fourteenth and I, sitting on a bench, slump-shouldered, her head bent. A hat concealed her face, her purse was slung over her shoulder. Silva must have canned her. No way I could talk to Miriam without the boys from the Bureau seeing me, but that was okay. Franklin Square, a park, was directly across the street, we could talk there unheard.
“Hey, kiddo, whattya doing out here?” I called out.
“Oh Ted, oh, I’m so glad you’re here, everything that’s happening, I—” A bout of blubbering prevented her from finishing. She was a wreck, a god-awful mess. Mascara running, face puffy, eyes red. I’d expected that—but not the bruises. One below her left eye, another on her right forearm. It looked like someone had wrenched her arm, leaving a purple-blue grip on her pale, soft skin. Goddamned Kenny, I thought. He couldn’t find me to avenge what I’d done to his boy Wade, so he’d taken it out on his foster sister instead.
“Hey, what happened?” Laying on concern.
“Nadine fired me!”
“Just now?” Trying to sound surprised.
“Soon as I walked in the door! Teddy, I tried to come in yesterday, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t, so I called in sick—and I was, I really was, and I was so worried about you and—”
A bus pulled to the curb, drowning her out. A gaggle of late-arriving office workers dashed out the door, rushing past us to get to their desks by nine.
“C’mon, kiddo, let’s go across ta da park and siddown, hey?” I reached for a hand, helped her to her feet.
“Teddy, I’m so happy you saw me!” she exclaimed as we crossed Fourteenth. “I was about to get on that bus, and I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“Hey, you been on my mind all morning.” I steered us toward a bench beneath an elm, where I could see anyone approaching. “Now, what’s dis ’bout Silva giving you da heave-ho?”
“Teddy, she found out I told you about her boyfriend.”
“What?” Trying to sound confused, not alarmed.
“’Member how I told you about her boyfriend, the one who got shot near the Navy Yard?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“And she didn’t even go to his funeral, ’member that?”
“Yeah, yeah, but what’s dat gotta do with her canning you?”
“She says I’m a gossip, Teddy! That I tell
stories and cause problems. But I don’t do that, do I? You’re the only one I told that story to.”
Silva hadn’t fired her for being a gabber, but I couldn’t tell her the real reason. Silva was on to me, her suspicions had grown, somehow she’d figured out I was pumping Miriam for information. Instead:
“Aw, kiddo, she didn’t can you because you like ta talk—dat’s bull, and she knows it. Naw, she’s just jealous, s’all, ’cause you got friends, you got a steady, you got a plan, yer going ta beauty school. What’s she got? Nuttin’!”
“Thank you, Teddy. I just knew there had to be some other reason. See, everybody knows Norman’s the gossip—he’s the one who told me about Silva’s boyfriend getting killed, ’member how I told you it was Norman who told me?”
“Sure I do,” I said, holding back a sigh of relief that Miriam hadn’t as yet wondered why Silva would accuse her of gossip if I was the only person at H & H Miriam had talked to. She wasn’t the brightest penny, Miriam—and what did it make me for exploiting her sweet dumb trust of Barston as much as I could?
“And he’s the one who told everybody about how her boyfriend was having an affair, not me.”
“He said what?” Trying not to sound interested.
“He eavesdropped on her talking to Mister Himmel one day, Teddy, and then went around and told everybody in the office—everybody!—that her boyfriend was cheating on her and she’d gone in to tell Mister Himmel all about it.”
“Yeah, he’s da one with da motormouth, not you, kiddo.” And how lucky for me that Norman liked to pry, liked to gossip, liked to cause disruptions.
“Why would Nadine tell her boss her boyfriend was two-timing her?”
Because, kiddo, the late, great Logan Skerrill wasn’t cheating on Silva—he was cheating on the Reds, on Himmel’s spy ring. Now I saw it, everything clicked. Skerrill, star of the Funhouse and O.N.I.’s Special Ops, hadn’t been content just to give all to the Reds while serving as a naval intelligence officer—the sonofabitch had the balls to go to the Bureau and sell himself as a mole. He was crazy enough to try it, Hoover was arrogant enough to buy it. Ol’ John Edgar saw a chance to roll up a Red spy ring and cripple a rival agency by running Skerrill as a double agent. But Silva found out, she got guidance in a coded letter, the one I read when I tossed her flat, before going to Himmel. Who’d taken control of the “affair” by icing Skerrill. And Himmel was too careful, too good to do the job with his own hands—he would have looked for a patsy, a fall guy, a dope he’d tricked into killing Skerrill.
“I dunno, who cares?” I mumbled to Miriam.
I glanced around. Like stray cats sniffing fish scraps in an ashcan, the Bureau’s boys had crept closer. Number one, on the bench down the path, no hat, blue overalls, posing as a factory worker still on a V-E bender, tilting a bottle in a paper bag to his lips. Number two, a guy in a blue suit pretending to read the newspaper at another bench. For sure number three was behind us, probably some joe tossing bread crumbs to pigeons. Slater and Reid had pulled out all the stops.
“Listen, kiddo, I gotta get in dare”—I jerked a thumb toward K Street—“before Silva cans me, too. But I’ll see you tonight, I promise.”
She looked up with alarm. “Don’t come to the house, Teddy—”
“Did Kenny do dis, ’cause’a what I did ta his boy?”
“Teddy, Wade’s in the hospital, he’s gonna be there at least a week, they say, and—”
“Who knocked you around, kiddo?”
She looked down. “It was Kenny, but he was real mad, Teddy, on account’a what you did, and he thought I knew where you lived and that I was lying when I told him I didn’t know. But I wouldn’ta told him even if I did know, Teddy, you gotta believe me, because Kenny, I’ve never seen him so mad, they’re looking for you, him and his boys, they might even try to get you at H & H—”
“Lemme worry ’bout Kenny, okay, kiddo? You got some place else you can stay?”
“No, I’ll be all right there, don’t worry—Kenny’s real sorry, he apologized—”
“Hey, how about’s you and me meet up at da bar across from dat Italian restaurant we went to, remember, on Twelfth Street? Tonight, eight o’clock?”
“Oh, that’d be wonderful.” She looked up, smiling, a joyous expression on her battered face. “You’ll be there, Teddy?”
“You bet, kiddo. You just sit tight and wait, okay, in case I’m a little late?”
And with that, I gave her a quick peck on the lips and hightailed it to H & H. Tried not to think about my previous intention to let her down easy, to take her out for a big night and coax her into believing that Barston didn’t want to leave her, but that he had to go. Stupid of me to believe that the investigation would yield such an opportunity. No, not stupid—selfish. “Props,” we’d learned to call them at the Funhouse, the people you cajoled, manipulated, and conned while working undercover. Poor Miriam, she didn’t even rate as a mark, like Himmel or Silva—she was just a prop. I’d told myself that I’d expiate my deception by treating her right at the end. But had I ever truly meant to do that, or had I just salved my conscience by resolving to be decent, just once? Barston had seduced Miriam, pumped her for information, then abandoned her. Worse—he’d wrecked her relationship with her brother. No matter that he was a dope dealer, violent and volatile, and not even her blood sibling. Kenny was the only brother she had, and what Barston had done at the party, his assault of that punk Wade, was unjustified. If he’d just walked away from Wade, ignored the taunts, no one would have examined the feigned hypo marks, no one would have questioned them. The pressures of being Barston had increased to the bursting point, but Miriam, not Barston, had paid the price.
As long as I was being honest with myself, then I needed to stop referring to Barston as if he were really another person, his actions beyond my responsibility and concern. I, Ellis Voigt, had assaulted Wade, my actions, my choices, had led to Miriam being beat up by her foster brother. And now I had lied again to her, promising to meet her that night just so I could get away from her and see my investigation to its end. How long would Miriam wait at the bar, telling herself through drink after drink that her Teddy was going to show? Who—what—had I become?
CHAPTER 31
I WASN’T EVEN OVER THE THRESHOLD WHEN SILVA GOT IN MY FACE, A finger held high to forestall any protest.
“You’re late, Barston—I’m docking you the entire morning’s pay. If you’re late again—”
“You’ll can me? Just like you did Miriam, huh?”
Her smile gave me chills. “Oh, did you run into our ex-receptionist just now, Barston, is that why you’re late? Offer her some solace, a shoulder to cry on? Least you could do after what you put her through.”
I should’ve known Silva would wring everything she could out of Miriam before canning her. So now Silva knew all about our night at the Rainbow and what I’d done to her brother’s punk at the party.
“I didn’t leave dose marks on her.”
“But you deserted her, didn’t you, Barston? Thrashed that kid and left her to face the music for you.”
Nothing I could say to that—Silva, damn her, was right. Like a coward, I’d let Miriam take the fall. Did Silva know I’d run to protect my cover? She suspected I wasn’t who I claimed to be, but how much did she know?
I said, curling my lip in contempt, “Why don’t you just can me now, hey? Your pal Philip can make da deliveries today.”
Her eyes narrowed almost to slits, she said nothing.
“Dat’s what I thought, toots.”
One crack too many. Greene, who’d been hovering nearby, pretending to go through some invoices, shot over and drilled a finger into my chest.
“You watch your mouth, Barston.” His breathing was fast and shallow, his other hand clenching into a fist.
I checked the instinct to seize his finger and whirl him around to pin his arm. Instead: “Or else?”
“Or else I take you out back and teach you some manners.”
“Ooh, some ettey-kette lessons, I like dat. How much you charge per hour?”
He grabbed my shirt by the buttons, using both hands. I pressed my hands into a V and shot them upward between his arms, breaking his grip. That put him off-balance, but he recovered quickly, moving into a boxer’s crouch: knees bent, fists held out on either side of his chin, eyes darting, watching my hands. Anybody can ape what they pick up from the movies or a three-card bout, but watching my hands, not my eyes—that showed Greene had actually spent some time in the ring. Picked on as a kid, he’d probably gone to a gym to learn a thing or two. I adopted a fighter’s posture, too, circling in the opposite direction.
“Oh, for God’s sake, you two,” Silva said with exasperation, but it was Himmel’s booming voice that halted our scrapping.
“Enough! Philip, get back to work. Barston, in here.”
I straightened up, dropped my arms, smirked. Greene was slower to ease off. “Lemme guess, you wanna say ‘dis isn’t over,’ don’t you?” I said breezily.
Whatever he mumbled, I didn’t catch. Silva started to say something to him, he cut her off, gesturing wildly. Himmel had already gone back in his office. I strode past the desks of clippers, ignoring their stares and whispers. Flashing on what Miriam had told me the night I took her to dinner at the Italian restaurant. Silva orders Greene around . . . Greene thinks he’s so important . . . he’s got a huge crush on her . . . when she found her boyfriend had been killed, Greene went to comfort her. That last detail didn’t jibe. Silva and Skerrill lovers, sure; Silva heartbroken at his death, not so much. Had Miriam’s source, the clipper Norman, lied about seeing Silva crying in order to add drama to his story? But maybe it wasn’t Silva I needed to be thinking about. Considering the way Greene had just come after me, maybe I needed to be thinking about him.
“Sit down, Ted,” Himmel said in a neutral voice.
The Dead Don't Bleed: A Novel Page 24
