by Don Swaim
“Far-flung relatives maybe?”
“I’m often there when the postman delivers her mail, but I never see her give him anything to go out. Don’t you find it odd?”
“You believe all this mail she gets has something to do with Leitner?”
“I think we ought to check it out. Especially in light of what’s happening in the world.”
Nineteen-thirty-eight was a bummer, shaping up abominably for global humanity. The Vatican formally recognized Franco’s Fascists; Canton was overrun by Jap warlords; on so-called Kristallnacht Nazi scum burned and looted Jewish businesses and synagogues; the Wehrmacht marched into the Sudetenland. And while all that lunacy was going on, hapless Neville Chamberlain declared peace for our time after licking Hitler’s ass.
A Checker stopped for us just as Orson Welles emerged from Café Society.
“Tokol, Diana,” he called. “I’m headed uptown. May I share your cab?”
Slender and boyish, with a basso voice and just twenty-four, Orson had the whole city talking. He’d roared into New York to do Shakespeare, launched his own Mercury Theater company, and now was realizing serious stuff on the radio for Columbia, not to mention being the voice of Lamont Cranston on Mutual’s “The Shadow.”
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of man?
Welles sometimes went around town in a black hat, cape, and mask.
“You’re a busy guy, Orson,” I said as we settled into the cab.
“I’m talking to RKO about directing a movie. If it pans out I’ll be in Hollywood next year. I know a lot of major-domos in the movie biz who think I’m not up to it, but I intend to prove them wrong.”
“What’s the movie about?”
“Something regarding a Machiavellian-like newspaper publisher, but I haven’t decided yet. However, whatever it is will be magnificent.”
“Spoken like a man of confidence,” Diana said.
“My dear, nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.”
He turned to the driver, saying, “Drop me off at the St. Regis Hotel on East Fifty-Fifth.”
I said, “Say, don’t you and your wife live on West Fifty-Seventh?”
Orson looked a little sheepish. “I, um, am going to see a friend before I return home.” He paused. “Don’t look at me like that, you two. If there hadn’t been women we men would still be squatting in caves eating raw meat. We made civilization to impress our girlfriends.”
As he exited the cab at the hotel, he said, “Why don’t you both visit my Columbia studio on Madison Avenue on Halloween? I’m cooking up something special for ‘The Mercury Theater on the Air,’ sort of a radio prank.”
“You won’t tell us what it is?” Diana said.
“And spoil the surprise?”
The next morning at Diana’s penthouse, we again pondered the oddity of the middle-aged seamstress in Yorkville and the German schlemiel in the big suit. It was small bore—based on the global turbulence of our decade, yet Diana and I enjoyed intrigue even if we had to invent our own.
She showed me the patterns she’d made for her new dress design, which Mrs. Waxweiler, a more than able seamstress, was working on.
“It’ll be beautiful, Tokee, darling. My dress is designed to stretch sensually over the contours of the body, a silk crepe-de-chine draping across the grain at a forty-five degree angle with a minimal amount of darting.”
“Hey, dollface, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but on you it’ll be a lollapalooza.”
“I’m leaving now for another fitting, so when I get to Mrs. Waxweiler’s I’ll snoop around. If anything comes up I’ll call your office from the payphone on Third Avenue under the Elevated around the corner from her shop.”
It didn’t take long. The phone rang the moment I walked into to my Chrysler Building suite.
“Grab a cab and get here quick, Tokee,” Diana said. “Mr. Leitner is inside the shop.”
While heading uptown to Yorkville, it entered my mind that perhaps there was no hanky panky, that Leitner and Waxweiler were just having a Teutonic-style, midlife fling. Maybe it was a bunch of hoo-ha on our part.
After I met up with Diana, we lurked in a doorway across from Waxweiler’s.
“Tokee, I had almost finished my fitting when Mr. Leitner came in. He and Mrs. Waxweiler merely nodded to each other, and he just kind of hung around, obviously waiting for me to leave. As usual, I saw a lot of mail with foreign postmarks. When I went back into the dressing room to change, I peeked through the curtain and saw him gather up all the mail and put it into a valise. I phoned you as soon as I left the shop. He’s been in there so long, I wonder what they’re doing.”
“Probably the dipsy doodle in the dressing room. Hold on, he’s leaving—carrying the valise.”
“Follow him, Tokee. Let’s get to the bottom of this. I’ll meet you back at the apartment.”
Leitner turned the corner, and two-blocks north mounted the stairs of the IRT’s 84th Street El. Perhaps overconfident, he seemed unaware he was being tailed.
After a five-car, south-bound, South Ferry local screeched into the station, he entered the second coach, while I got into the third. Riding between cars, I watched him through the end door. The noise was deafening, not only the squeal of wheel against rail, but the rattle and knock of the wooden cars.
As we lurched south, on either side of the track I saw into the open windows of the tenements, some so close I could almost grab the laundry flapping from the clotheslines. From some of those windows eyes glared back at me, and I felt as though I were an intruder, ogling private intimacies I had no right to observe. Tenement living was more of a blight than a blessing, despite the pathos of geraniums flowering on the windowsills.
Leitner got off the train at 53rd, and I followed as he left the El and walked west to 12th Avenue where he ducked into the aptly-named Hell’s Kitchen Diner directly across from Pier 90—where the German cruise ship Europa was berthed.
Through the front window, I saw Leitner sitting in a booth across from a man dressed in a white, nautical uniform. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but soon the ship’s crewman, carrying the valise, left and walked across the street to the pier.
I decided to stick with Leitner, who headed to 42nd just west of Times Square and the Dixie, a middling hotel that shared space with the Central Union Bus terminal. The buses entered the basement via a ramp and onto a revolving platform so they could be turned. Inside the seven-hundred room hotel, I lost him. I didn’t know if Leitner took a bus out of town or an elevator to a room. The desk clerk confirmed Leitner was a guest, registered in room nineteen-nineteen, a number I consigned to memory.
Back at Diana’s, we compared notes.
“Tokee, I learned that Mrs. Waxweiler’s late husband was born in Dusseldorf, was a private in the German Army in the Great War, and that the two met in New York when he was sent here by his employer, a German electronics firm. I didn’t ask about the foreign mail addressed to her. It might make her suspicious.”
“And rightly so because Leitner gave all that mail to a crewmember of the Europa, which makes weekly crossings to Hamburg. Also, Leitner’s shelling out two-and-a-half bucks a night for a room with private bath and radio at the Dixie Hotel.
“And all this tells us… what?”
“That Mrs. Waxweiler’s shop is a mail-drop for Nazi spies.”
“Although we’re not at war with Germany.”
“The Nazis are getting a head start.”
“Okay, Tokee, what are we going to do about it?”
“I know an agent in the FBI’s New York field office, Mike Litvak. He’s not too bright, but he was born in Belarus, so he not only speaks Belarusian but German. Worked on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and got an arm wound during that gangland massacre at Union Station in Kansas City. He’s a high-profile agent. I’ll run what we have past him.”
Just that morning I read in the Herald Tribune that my old pal Clarence Darrow had died in Ch
icago, and wired my condolences to his widow Ruby. I hadn’t seen him since I bailed him out of an extortion con in Illinois coal country. Darrow once spoke to the Associated Motion Picture Advertisers at a luncheon, coincidentally at the Dixie Hotel. The Hollywood studios had been coerced into adopting a ludicrous self-censorship code, which, among other things, prohibited excessive kissing and ridicule of the clergy, although not necessarily in that order. They even made Betty Boop change her short skirts. Darrow hated censorship in any form, as he made clear in his speech.
Shouting came easily to Mike Litvak, who wanted to become more famous in FBI annals than Melvin Purvis, the agent who shot Dillinger. Mike and I had something in common. We both despised J. Edgar Hoover.
“Damn it, Tokol,” he roared when I met him at the agency’s downtown field office. “You might have blown our whole operation—if we actually had one.”
“You know about Leitner and Waxweiler?”
“Waxweiler, no. But I’ve had Leitner in my sights. His name came up when an MI6 operative in Bremen uncovered some compromising papers involving the Gestapo. Problem is, there’s nothing we can pin on him.”
“I met Leitner the other night at Café Society, Mike. He gives every impression of being an idiot. And if he’s a spy he’s a klutz.”
“I suspect it was Leitner who phoned the Manhattan Passport Office alleging to be a Mr. Jones, assistant to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. The caller demanded that fifty blank passports be hand-delivered to him at a room at the Dixie Hotel. Spies can do a lot with a blank passport.
“Naturally, the passport clerk was suspicious, checked with Hull’s office, found there was no such assistant, and called the NYPD. When the cops went to the room of this so-called Jones—surprise!—it was empty.”
“An obvious and stupid con, Mike.”
“I think it was a test run for a bigger and better scam at the same hotel. This time, someone claiming to be a Colonel Smith, aide de camp to the Third Army Corps’s commanding general, phoned Fort Totten in Willets Point and spoke to one of the staff, Lieutenant Walters.
“This Smith, no doubt Leitner, ordered Walters to bring classified papers about American coastal defenses to an emergency military meeting at, yes, the Dixie, room fourteen-twelve. Walters was instructed to tell no one. Since caller had a foreign accent, the lieutenant, being skeptical, phoned us.”
“You guys will be there when Walters and this so-called Smith meet, right?”
“Wrong. Hoover’s put the kibosh on it. Claims there are too many jurisdictional issues. War Department, Army, NYPD, State Department. He’s keeping the FBI out of it. And me in particular.”
“So Leitner, an obvious Nazi spy practically begging to be arrested, will be sitting in a room at the Dixie waiting for classified info to be dumped on his lap. And you bums won’t be there to bust the bastard?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Such a crock. Mike, I’ll go as Lieutenant Walters.”
“You?”
“Why not? If the FBI’s not interested in capturing a Nazi spy I am.”
“But you said Leitner knows you.”
“We only met once. I’ll wear a disguise.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll take care of Leitner in my own way.”
“Tokol, you know the FBI can’t back you up. I gotta lay low on this. Hoover’s been riding my ass, claims I’m getting more publicity than he is. Listen, I’ll try to be there, unofficially, but if anything goes wrong you’re on your own.”
“I’ve got Diana. She’s a match for any Nazi. Mike, make me photostats of some nautical charts, the kind publicly available from any marine shop. I need to take something that looks halfway legit.”
We shook on it.
For years, I had been playing the alhaita, an African double-reed wind instrument I took up under the tutelage of Nigerian prince Gabriel Momodu, who became a chum during my diamond-dealing days. The oboe-like alhaita was a bitch to master, but by Western standards my playing was… Well, even it if was lousy who in the States would know?
New York needed me and my alhaita. The city hadn’t been the same since LaGuardia banned the hurdy-gurdy men. Why? The half-Italian mayor was embarrassed by organ grinders from Naples dispatching monkeys with funny hats and tin cups to beg for coins.
My confrontation with Leitner at the Dixie wasn’t until the next afternoon, so in formal dress I packed my alhaita and went to Carnegie Hall where Benny Goodman and his band were setting up for a major jazz concert. I met Benny through Diana when she worked with NBC’s “Let’s Dance” and Benny was making his mark as The King of Swing. Benny was one smart cookie, so no wonder his show was sponsored by the National Biscuit Company.
Dressed in white tie and tails, Benny said, “Hey, Tokol, I see you brought your alhaita. You going to sit in with us tonight?”
“That’s the idea, if you’ll have me.”
“I’ll seat you in the wind section with Ziggy Elman, Harry James, Art Rollin, Babe Russin, and Hymie Schertzer.”
“You’re aces with me, pal.”
“I guess you know our repertoire.”
“By heart.”
“I’ve been trying to get some of the band to learn the alhaita, but it’s too hard for them. What’s the secret?”
“Simple. Superior lung capacity, breathing from the diaphragm, and spine stabilization. Squats and weightlifting help too.”
“Hmmm, let me write that down.”
“Say, Benny, isn’t Carnegie Hall an unusual venue for you?”
“Yeah, there are lots of highbrows who don’t cotton to swing, so I’m a little nervous.”
“But you always look so relaxed up on stage.”
“Relaxed, my elbow. It’s practice. Isn’t that how you get to Carnegie Hall?”
Benny had nothing to worry about. Every seat was sold out—even though the best ones were priced at a near prohibitive two bucks seventy-five. The place rocked with wild applause and dancing in the aisles, especially during my alhaita solo on “Sing, Sing, Sing” backed by Gene Krupa on the tubs.
Although exhilarated by the music, I slept poorly that night, tossing and turning. It had been four years since we put The Man With Two Faces into the ground, but rarely was there a night that Janus hadn’t returned to haunt me in my dreams. Some of those hallucinogenic visions were so vivid that his murderous anger and rage felt almost tactile, and yet his visitations would not cease until I cried out in my sleep. Diana would hold me saying, “Tokee, it’s all right. Janus is gone now.”
Although exhausted after the Goodman concert, and my lack of sleep, I was as prepared as I could be for my confrontation with Dedrick Leitner in room fourteen-twelve of the Dixie Hotel.
As Lieutenant Walters, I was smartly dressed in breeches, boots, military tunic emblazoned with medals, and a riding crop under my arm. With a thin mustache under my nose and peaked visor hat on my head, it was unlikely the Kraut would recognize me.
Okay, I might have slightly overdone it with the riding crop.
Although he had claimed in his phony call that he was the commanding general’s top aide, Leitner wasn’t in uniform himself, which was no surprise. The little shit wore the same over-sized suit he had on that night at Café Society. Like a good officer I saluted anyway.
“Did you bring the papers, Lieutenant Walters?”
“Indeed, Colonel Smith, just as you asked. They’re top secret, sir. Should they fall into the wrong hands…”
“That will be all, Lieutenant,” he said taking from my hand the envelope with the nautical charts.
“Sir, I thought this was an emergency staff meeting, but I see no one else here.”
Holding the papers in one hand, with the other he pulled a Luger from his coat.
“Raise your hands, schweinhund.”
“I’m beginning to think I’ve been misled, Colonel.”
“Colonel, mein arsch. You Americans are not only decadent with your jazz, your comic strip
s, your radio quiz shows, and your silly Hollywood movies, but you are all dummkopfs, as we say in Dortmund. Now march to the toilet.”
“But I don’t have to go.”
“Better I shoot you dead in the tub rather than to make more work for the maid. I like to be tidy. It is a family trait.”
“Why are you going to shoot me?”
“To leave no witnesses to our little transaction.”
With the Luger he motioned toward the bathroom door. Naturally, I obeyed. Who’d want to mess up the floor of the Dixie Hotel with a little blood?
Inside the claustrophobic bathroom, he ordered me to climb into the tub.
“May I wash my hands first?”
“Why?”
“It’s part of my religion. We always clean ourselves properly before saying our prayers.”
“Then do it, but quick. Schnell!”
I ran the water in the sink. It came out slow and rusty. Dribble, dribble, dribble. As the water sluggishly filled the sink, Leitner grew impatient.
“Enough,” he said finally. “I am not waiting. Open your mouth.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me.”
I did as ordered. He placed the gun barrel in my mouth, not deep, but far enough for me to know that a bullet was about to enter my brain through my palate.
But one thing the moron forgot. The riding crop under my arm. To use it I had to get close to him, and the tiny bathroom was ideal.
In the blink of an eye, as we stood next to the trickling faucet, I jerked my head away from the gun while pivoting the crop, bringing it up hard on Leitner’s gun hand. The Luger went off, just past my ear, but the bullet thudded harmlessly into the ceiling.
Damn, that shot was loud. My ear was ringing.
Leitner was no more accomplished as an assassin than he was as a spy.
I continued to make decent use of the riding crop, giving the bastard more than a few good whacks as I wrestled the gun away. As he cowered into a pathetic Germanic ball on the floor, I was tempted finish him off with his own Luger. But I figured Litvak might want to ask a few questions of an actual, breathing Nazi spy.
