When there was no response, I pounded again. “Open up or we’ll arrest you!” I crouched and set my shoulder. Open the goddamned door you ugly stupid commie sonofa—
Pop, pop, pop—three shots hit the door, one shattering the window. Glass fragments burst past me. Instinctively I hit the ground and rolled away from the door. So much for tricking my way in. Now what? I looked up at the narrow band of windows set high on the exterior wall. Get a rock, bust out the glass, climb in—
Pop. Just one shot, muted. It didn’t hit the door. Oh Jesus, please, no. From the rear, a metallic creak, then a thud—the two Russians running away through the rear. I shot my right hand through the hole in the broken window, strained to turn the bolt, and wrenched the door open. Shards lacerated my forearm, blood beaded—I felt nothing. I ran through the small front office and onto the shop floor. Kenny was slumped in the chair, chin on his chest. Blood seeped from a wound just below his rib cage on his left side. I heard a gasp—he was still alive. Racing forward, I gently lifted his chin, looked into his glazed eyes.
“Kenny, can you hear me?”
His lips trembled, but no words came out; his eyelids drooped. I needed to compress the wound, but with what? I fumbled with the rope that bound the boy to the chair. I ripped my fingernails pulling at the knots, finally loosening them enough to free him. I ripped his shirt off, popping off the buttons, and hurriedly folded it into a square. Pressing the cloth to the wound with my left hand, I eased him to the floor and crouched over him.
“Stay with me buddy, you’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna be okay.” I pressed the compress tighter, blood—his and mine, from my cuts—staining my hands.
Kenny moaned. In my panic, heart pounding and breathing rushed, a sharp warning rose out of my jumbled thoughts: If you stay, he dies. I whipped off my belt, cinched it around his torso to hold the compress tight. Was the bleeding slowing down? I lifted Kenny back into the chair and gently lifted his chin.
“Look at me, buddy, look at me.”
He was in shock, but for a moment his gaze locked on mine. Did I see recognition in his eyes, or was it only pain?
“Kenny, I’m going to get you to help, okay? It’s not far, but I need you to do something, all right? Nod if you understand.”
Tick of his head.
“Put your arms around my chest when I pick you up and hold your hands together, like this.” I held up my laced fingers, as if praying. “Can you do that?”
Another nod, and a yelp of pain.
“Okay Kenny, we’re getting outta here.” I crouched, backed into the chair, started to rise. “Put your arms around me now!”
He reached around my chest, groped weakly, locked his hands together.
“That’s it, that’s it.” Taking a deep breath, I stood as quickly as possible, hooking my forearms under his knees like we were contestants in a piggyback race at a picnic. Only this was no game. I was going to carry him to the Harbor Patrol Station, where he could get real first aid and the fastest possible trip to a hospital. All my scheming to conceal my identity on the telephone and to Kenny’s mother—useless! And selfish, so selfish. As someone who went undercover, I was trained to carry out my investigations and protect my identity at all costs. God knows, I’d committed awful acts to do that in the past, but hazarding this boy’s life to bust up the Reds’ spy ring was despicable, monstrous, the worst thing I’d ever done in my life. Why hadn’t I realized the Russians would go after him? I should have known the N.K.V.D. wouldn’t just grill me, that its agents would go after anyone who had knowledge of what had happened that night. Even the earnest, amiable kid in the white apron and crooked paper hat from the Automat. That very morning, I’d realized I had to find Kenny, needed to protect him somehow, some way—why hadn’t I seen the danger sooner? Just one day earlier, even a few hours … if only, if only I had acted sooner.
Bent-backed, I started running, Kenny clinging to me. Burst out the door the Russians had shot at, blinking in the sun, already huffing. The back of my shirt quickly became damp—I hoped it was just my sweat and not Kenny’s blood. My belt buckle chafed against my spine, but that meant the compress was holding tight. I felt Kenny’s breath on my neck, heard his whimpers of pain. No way to stop the jostling, I had to run as fast as I could.
“D’hell?!” A portly man ahead on the sidewalk was slowing his pace, gaping at me. A working stiff, his overalls splattered with paint.
“This boy’s been shot,” I shouted at him. “Help me!”
“Shot, for real?” He stopped, eyes wide, cigarette drooping from his lip.
“Go in front of us, clear the way!”
“Whaaa—” he stammered.
“Move, goddammit!” I yelled.
That got him going. He dropped the cigarette, started trotting, turning his head awkwardly.
“Do you want—should I, should we carry him together?”
“No, we just, we just gotta get him to the police station, they can take …” My voice, strained by Kenny’s weight and the running, trailed off.
“Okay, gotcha.” He too was huffing but he kept going.
A motorist on Maine slowed his car, craned his head out the open window.
“What’s going on here?”
“This boy’s been shot!” shouted my good Samaritan.
“You kiddin’ me?” The driver started blathering useless questions while the Samaritan repeatedly said, “I don’t know nothing.” And I kept running, muttering, “Almost there, Kenny, almost there.”
With the Samaritan still in front, we burst into the Harbor Patrol Station. Beads of sweat stinging my eyes, I blurrily saw the desk sergeant leap to his feet. He raced over to me, his cop’s intuition taking over.
“How bad’s he hurt?”
“Shot in the side, I’ve got cloth on the wound but—”
“Follow me,” the cop cut me off. “You, come with us,” pointing at the Samaritan.
We trailed the cop as he ran down a corridor behind his desk. “Get Ramsay,” he shouted at an approaching Harbor Patrol officer who took in the scene wordlessly and swiftly reversed directions.
“In here,” the desk cop said, flinging open a door. A map room, lined with wooden cabinets for harbor charts. In the center, a broad table.
“Put him down,” the cop said, not bothering to pull off a sheaf of charts on the table.
As carefully as possible, I brought Kenny to the table, my back turned, and the cop helped me gently lay him on his back. Kenny still yelped with pain.
“It hurts so bad,” he whimpered.
“I know, kid, I know,” the cop said.
“Mother of God,” the Samaritan whispered.
A middle-aged cop hurtled into the room with a first aid kit. RAMSAY, CHIEF ENGINEER his nameplate read.
“Whadda we got?”
“Gunshot,” the desk cop said. I was finally able to read his nameplate: BENDER.
Ramsay looked into Kenny’s eyes as he opened his kit. “What’s your name, kid, when were you born?”
“Kenny, Kenny Newhurst … February 17, 1928,” he whispered through gritted teeth.
“Call an ambulance,” Ramsay said to Bender, who nodded. Ramsay said to Kenny, “Okay, we’re going to get you fixed up, all right, Kenny? You don’t have to talk anymore, just try to breathe normal, okay? Squeeze my hand if you understand.” He took his hand and said “Good boy” at his grip.
Bender pointed at the Samaritan and me. “Don’t you two leave this room, understand?”
I nodded briskly; “Yessir,” the Samaritan answered. Bender hurried out, closing the door behind him.
Ramsay scissored through my belt and gently pulled it free of Kenny’s torso. He peeled off the compress I’d put on. He swabbed the wound area with an alcohol-soaked pad, expertly wiping away dried blood as he took Kenny’s pulse.
“How bad is it?” the Samaritan asked in a hushed voice.
“Nothing I didn’t see in the last war,” Ramsay said matter-of-factly. “I do
n’t think the bullet hit any organs, and he hasn’t lost much blood.” Looking at Kenny, he said, “You’ll pull through, kid, and we’re gonna do something about the pain real quick.”
“Anything we can do to help?” I asked. He’ll pull through! I was so relieved, so happy, I almost shouted, He’s not gonna die, he’s not gonna die!
“Just keep staying outta my way.”
Bender returned, again shutting the door behind him.
“Ambulance is on its way, three minutes tops.”
“Great,” Ramsay murmured, concentrating on the syringe he was preparing.
Bender turned his attention to the Samaritan and me, eyeing us over. That veteran law stare, eyes boring down, searching for distinctive features, recording all details of our appearances. Making judgments about our likely occupations and backgrounds, taking guesses about how we knew each other. And this experienced cop, a trim joe with a crew cut and a deep suntan from his time out on the water, didn’t like what he saw, not at all. As he worked through the possibilities of how we’d come to bring in a boy with a gunshot wound, his mouth tightened, his expression hardened—only for an instant, but I could tell what he was thinking. Were we diddlers or worse, kiddie snatchers with unspeakable urges? He was coloring in the scene, seeing us cruising hardscrabble neighborhoods looking for boys, biding our time, then making quick grabs by brandishing a revolver. This time, something had gone wrong, the weapon had discharged accidentally. Why we’d bring in the boy instead of fleeing, he hadn’t worked out, but that’s what interrogations were for, right? The Samaritan and I were Suspects 1 and 2 in this boy’s shooting, and neither of us was leaving this station house for a long, long time.
I couldn’t spare the time to convince Bender of the truth. What did the old man look like? Shovel-face had demanded of Kenny. Jes’ an old man, he had whimpered. The Russians had beaten up poor Kenny to get every detail of what he had seen that night in May at the Automat when Himmel met with his spy. Although Kenny couldn’t remember what the old man looked like, Shovel-face and his partner now knew I’d been holding back on them. That I hadn’t gone to the Automat alone, that this old man had accompanied me and he’d brought along listening equipment that we’d set up in the kitchen. It wouldn’t take the Russians long to figure out who the old man was: Filbert Donniker, O.N.I.’s resident gadgets man. I’d coaxed Donniker to come with me to the Automat, I’d dragged him into this unholy mess along with Kenny. What the Russians had just done to Kenny was a rehearsal compared to what they’d do to Donniker if I didn’t get to him first.
Which meant I had to get out of the Harbor Patrol Station pronto.
CHAPTER 6
OFFICER BENDER WAITED TO CONFRONT THE SAMARITAN AND ME UNTIL after the ambulance orderlies had taken Kenny out. That gave me an opening. Figure Bender would isolate us, question us separately to see how our stories matched up. Figure he’d hit us each hard, no good-cop-bad-cop nonsense for him. The Samaritan had nothing to hide, he’d tell all. Bender wouldn’t believe him, he’d call him a liar and worse, but after the cops checked out the Samaritan’s story, they’d let him go. The man had done nothing wrong, he had nothing to hide. Meanwhile I’d be sweating my interrogation. I couldn’t improvise a fake identity, no way I could knit all the necessary lies together as Bender peppered me with questions. Who are you, where do you live, where do you work—the seasoned cop would smell fish from the get-go. What I had to do, I was going to hate myself for doing, but I didn’t have a choice. The Samaritan had been minding his own business, walking down the street when he stumbled across me and Kenny. He hadn’t hesitated to help save Kenny’s life, and being treated as a low-life criminal would be his only reward.
“So, stranger, you gonna tell us what the hell happened to that boy?” I said sternly, pointing an accusing finger at the Samaritan.
The poor man blanched, the color ran from his face like water down a drain; his eyes widened with terror and confusion. What a shitheel I was! Tried to tell myself I was doing this for Donniker, for the case, but that didn’t wash my shame and guilt away, not a bit.
“D’hell, whaa, I, uh, I, I … th-th-that’s not—”
Bender cut off his stammering. “You two don’t know each other?” he asked with suspicion.
“No, no! I don’t know him from Adam!” the Samaritan cried, finally finding words. He was trembling. “For chrissake, I was walking down the street, that fella came running outta nowhere, he’s got the boy on his back, he’s starts shouting how he’s been shot, I gotta help, so that’s what I did, s’all I did, I helped ’em get here!”
A full-on cop glare from Bender. “Awright you two, we’re gonna get this sorted out. C’mon.” He flung the door open and waited for us to pass by him to enter the hall. Solid cop instincts, making us go first (never leave a suspect behind your back), but he should have brought another cop with him.
I followed the Samaritan, who stopped uncertainly in the corridor. I stepped behind him, leaving myself a path toward the rear of the station. When Bender came out, I knocked the Samaritan’s right leg from under him and shouldered him into the startled cop. Both men went down, a tangle of limbs and curses. I shot down the corridor and out the door. The good news: No one was in my way. Bad news: I’d just trapped myself on the Harbor Patrol’s dock on the Washington Channel. No time to make a break for Maine Avenue—Bender would be out the door in seconds, a bevy of cops behind him.
I dropped, rolled, and lowered myself into the murky water, gripping the side of the dock, peering into the darkness. I needed a cable, a ring, a cleat—anything to hold onto. Had to get my hands off the dock, had to find a way to remain perfectly still. Two pilings supported the dock, but no handholds. I let go of the dock, dropping full into the water, and reached for one of the pilings. No choice but to bear-hug it, my legs clasped and arms wrapped, hands gripping my arms to keep from slipping. The rough wood of the pilings scraped the cuts I’d gotten breaking the window at the factory, but I ignored the pain. Couldn’t avoid splashing as I positioned myself, but the cops were making more than enough noise to cover me. Boots thumping, planks clattering as two officers ran onto the dock, excited shouts all around. “D’fuck he go?!”—“Hit the street! Hit the street!”—“Check the boat.”
The Harbor Patrol’s boat was moored at the end of the dock, and it took the cops a good five minutes to search it. I stayed as still as possible, oily water lapping at my chest, my arms aching.
When the cops were back on the dock, one asked, “Maybe he’s in the water?”
My heart jumped into my throat, but the cops didn’t peer beneath the planks—they must have scanned the channel.
“Well, he ain’t swimming for it.”
“What if he gets over to the Potomac?” He meant the Potomac River Line, which operated passenger boats on the channel and river. Its dock was on the north side of the patrol station.
“Shit, he might mix in with the crowd.” The boots thundered overheard as they hurried away.
I waited a beat, took a deep breath, let go of the piling, and went underwater. Squinting in the dark water, I breast-stroked toward the patrol boat’s stern and grasped the ladder next to the rudder. I slowly broke the surface, scanning the scene. My visibility was limited, but the dock looked empty—the search had already fanned out. I scrambled up the ladder and dropped to the boat’s deck, beneath the gunwales. Crawling to the cabin, I sounded like a rainstorm: drops pattered from my drenched clothing, my shoes squished. I immediately went down into the hold so I couldn’t be spotted through the cabin portals.
How long did I have? I couldn’t risk hiding aboard, because the cops could return any moment to recheck the boat. I needed to get out of my wet clothes pronto, needed to disembark. That meant, of course, I had to walk right back toward the station house. A change of appearance wouldn’t help if I crossed paths with Bender, Ramsay, or the Samaritan.
First things first. I emptied my pockets, stripped off my shoes and clothes. Found a blanket in
a locker and dried myself. Naked, I continued to search the hold, checking the other lockers, pulling out drawers and opening cabinets. I was hoping to find a Harbor Patrol overcoat—no such luck, I had to settle for a stained, frayed jumper. But a battered metal toolbox stamped PROPERTY OF M.P.D. gave me an idea. I donned the jumper, vigorously toweled my hair with the blanket to dry it, and pulled on a pair of rubber boots I’d also found. A work cap and a pair of reading glasses finished my disguise, such as it was. After removing the tools from the box, I rolled my wet clothes into the blanket and stuffed it into the box, adding my wallet, keys, and other pocket items. My ruined cigarettes and matches went into the bilge. Dabbed my face with grease from a wrench and took a moment to study the engine. Then I grabbed the toolbox and came out of the hold.
I trod onto the deck, my posture hunched to make me look shorter. Two cops were now on the esplanade, arguing about who was going to get his feet wet. Sounded like someone—Bender, probably—had finally thought to check beneath all nearby docks. I’d never seen them before, but if they were the same two who had searched the patrol boat a little while ago, I was screwed.
“You lost the toss, so wade in, friend,” one was saying.
“Funny how I always lose the toss when you flip,” his partner answered.
They stopped squabbling as I strode toward them.
“Where’s Ramsay?” I called out, remembering that his nameplate had identified him as the chief engineer.
“Ramsay, dunno”—“Who’re you?” they said at the same time.
“Frank Morgan, Central Garage, Ramsay called me in. Tells me you got a bad gasket, all’s I gotta do is replace it, okay, but what he doesn’t tell is, you also need a new manifold, so I gotta take apart the whole damn engine—twenty-minute job, my ass—say, what time is it anyway?”
The unhappy cop glanced at his watch. “Quarter past six, but—”
“You been aboard all this time?” the coin-flipping cop exclaimed.
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