Louise's Gamble

by Sarah R. Shaber

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Alessa said.

  ‘Now because of you I don’t have to watch this awful man feed information to the Nazis.’

  ‘But if,’ Alessa said as she looked around to see if anyone was nearby, ‘the man is guilty, why would anyone hurt you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t matter. You know of omertà, the code of silence? If I break it, I am a rat. Rats die. So,’ he said, ‘you give that name to your friend Louise and forget you ever saw it.’

  ‘When am I going to see you again? Meet your wife and children?’

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘After all this is ended.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  The District of Columbia jail was ugly when it was built in 1895. Now that its facade was coated with years of grime and soot it looked like an abandoned factory, except for the police cars and paddy wagons lined up outside. Even here you could tell there was a war on. A couple of Army jeeps manned by military policemen parked among the police cars. I supposed they were there to pick up soldiers who’d gotten arrested the night before.

  I attracted plenty of notice as I walked up the broad cement steps and into the lobby. I was the only woman in sight. Resolutely, I ignored the stares of the policemen and the crowd of crime reporters and photographers who sprawled on benches around the lobby. I presented myself at the reception desk, a heavy wooden counter topped with bars that reached to the ceiling.

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’ the sergeant on duty asked.

  ‘I want to visit a prisoner,’ I said. ‘She works for me, and I just learned today that she’s here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but it ain’t visiting hours,’ he said.

  I focused on keeping my voice calm and steady. ‘I understand that she was arrested for possibly having venereal disease.’

  ‘Oh,’ the sergeant said, wrinkling his nose as though he’d gotten a whiff of a bad odor. ‘One of them girls. They ain’t exactly arrested, just taken into custody.’

  What was the difference, I wondered?

  ‘They’re in a special ward. You can go on back there. Mike,’ he called out to a policeman walking through the lobby, ‘take—’ and he looked at me questioningly.

  ‘Mrs Louise Pearlie,’ I said.

  ‘Take Mrs Pearlie back to the women’s quarantined ward,’ he said.

  Mike was white-haired and stooped. I guessed he’d be retired if it weren’t for the war. He led me through a vast hall four stories tall, stacked with barred cells from floor to ceiling, all reached by what looked like fire escapes. There was a large blackboard in the middle of the hall surrounded by metal chairs.

  ‘That’s where the illiterate prisoners are supposed to learn to read,’ Mike said. ‘Most of them don’t do too good. But Mrs Roosevelt is big on rehabilitation, so we got to try to teach them something.’

  Through a door at the far end of the vast space we found ourselves in a one-story corridor that led to a wall of bars with another door set into it. Mike rang a bell, and another guard appeared.

  ‘Mrs Pearlie here wants to see one of the sluts,’ he said. If Mike was expecting a rise from me, he didn’t get it. It wouldn’t help Betty if I made a scene. If I was to help her slip back into a normal life, the less memorable we both were the better.

  Officer Runyan, according to his name tag, led me past a couple of cells. There were no female guards that I could see. We reached one occupied by four women lying on the bare mattresses of two bunk beds. There was nowhere else to sit.

  The guard put a key in the lock and opened the door with a clang. ‘Betty, girl, you got a visitor,’ he called out. ‘Fifteen minutes,’ he said to me.

  Betty instantly sat up from where she was curled up on a lower bunk. Two other women, wrapped in blankets, rolled over on their bunks to get a look at me, then rolled back to go back to sleep.

  I sat down next to Betty, and she burst into hysterical sobs. I took her in my arms. She hadn’t bathed in days. Her hair was filthy and stringy, and dirt showed beneath her fingernails.

  ‘How did you find out?’ she said, between sobs.

  ‘I went to your boarding house, and Myrna told me,’ I said.

  ‘I want to kill myself,’ she said, ‘I really do. I’m ruined!’

  I took her by both arms and shook her. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘You’re only ruined if you allow it to happen.’

  ‘That sailor lied! I didn’t sleep with him! He was getting back at me for dumping him!’

  I resisted the urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her again, this time until her teeth rattled. ‘I don’t care if you’ve screwed a dozen men,’ I said. ‘If that test comes back negative, you pull yourself together and come back to work. You can bet that’s what he’s doing; he’s not giving you, or the fact that he had clap, a second thought. He’s going on with his life.’

  ‘You won’t tell?’

  ‘Why would I do that? You’ve been ill. After you recover you’ll return to work.’ I took her face in my hands. ‘Tell me the truth,’ I said. ‘Do you think you’ve got it?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t have any of the symptoms.’ She burst into tears again. ‘No one will ever marry me now.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said, ‘and listen to me. When you get your test back tomorrow, if it’s negative, what happens?’

  ‘They release me, and I go jump off the Washington Monument.’

  ‘Be serious.’

  ‘They release me, and then I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you have any money?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Here,’ I said, digging into my handbag. ‘Here’s five dollars. Get a taxi and go back to your boarding house.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t face my friends. You don’t know what it was like! They put me in a paddy wagon with prostitutes and drunks!’

  ‘Stop it, or I’ll walk out of here right now. I mean it! Here,’ I said, giving her my clean handkerchief.

  Slowly, Betty stopped sniffling.

  ‘You go back to your boarding house tomorrow,’ I said. ‘You tell everyone that you’ve been horribly wronged. This soldier—’

  ‘Sailor,’ she interrupted.

  ‘This sailor you dated, he turned you in to get back at you for not putting out, get it? You stick to that story, understand? And cry a lot. No one can prove it’s not true.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Gary, that’s his name, had to give girls’ names to the pecker-checker, or he would have been sent to the brig. So he got back at me!’

  ‘That’s it. He’ll be shipped out soon, if he hasn’t been already.’

  ‘With luck he’ll get shot in his dick. That’s what he deserves,’ one of the other women said, without turning around to face us.

  ‘When you get home clean yourself up,’ I said to Betty. ‘You’ll feel better. Myrna and Lil will help you. Myrna has the number of my boarding house, and she’ll call me to let me know you’re home. Then the next day, you come to work, maybe still feeling a little poorly.’

  She cringed. ‘I don’t know if I can,’ she said.

  ‘If you don’t show up by nine thirty, I’m coming for you in a taxi, and I’ll drag you back to the office by your hair. Got it?’

  ‘Do you think it will work?’

  ‘Of course it will work. Your girlfriends won’t let you down. And any possible record you might have is buried deep in a file cabinet in a basement somewhere. After the war they’ll make bonfires of all that paper.’

  Betty wiped her eyes with the dingy sleeves of her striped prison housecoat. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Forget it.’

  Betty’d been a little fool, but she was a damn good typist, and I didn’t want to even think about how difficult it would be to replace her.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘How’s Betty?’ Brenda asked.

  I needed to be careful about what I answered. I couldn’t lie to anyone at OSS, but I wanted to give Betty a chance to return.

  ‘Not well,’ I said. ‘But I hope she’ll be back soon.’ />
  ‘Don wants you in his office,’ Ruth said. ‘You sure you two aren’t an item again?’

  ‘Never! Don’t even let that cross your mind! It’s that special job I did for him, sorting the postcards, you know? Apparently, I’m now the go-to girl for all his projects.’

  Melinsky waited for me alone in Don’s office. He wore his tailored uniform today. With his legs crossed, puffing on one of his imported cigarettes, he could have been sitting in the morning room of an estate, waiting for his steward to brief him on the progress of the spring lambing.

  Melinsky stubbed out his cigarette and gestured for me to sit down. ‘We need to discuss tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason to think anything untoward will happen, but we must make plans for every eventuality.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. My pulse quickened.

  ‘First, what we know about the Oneto family.’ Melinsky proceeded to brief me on the contents of the Oneto OSS file, which I’d already read, while I nodded as if it was news to me.

  ‘Of course, we have done some additional research,’ Melinsky said. ‘We’ve found that here in Washington the Onetos live at the Mayflower hotel.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. My friend Joan’s studio apartment was in the Mayflower.

  ‘The Onetos rent a big apartment there,’ Melinsky said. ‘The household includes Count Sebastian; his wife, Alessa; his mother, Lucia; a maid; and a private secretary. All with unsurprising backgrounds. Typical exiles waiting out the war in safety, although the Count has tried to enlist, I’ll give him that. Flunked all his physicals. Terrible vision and a heart murmur.’

  I wondered what sort of man Alessa was married to. She was a good, brave woman, and I hoped the Count was worthy of her.

  Two Army privates wrapped in greatcoats, their breath steaming, passed by the window with their guns at the ready. They were part of the detail that protected our grounds, and they couldn’t have overheard us, anyway, but Melinsky waited for their footsteps to fade away before he spoke again.

  ‘Alessa and the private secretary, a man named Rossi, took the train to New York on Tuesday,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to follow her!’

  ‘I felt it was necessary, but he went no further than the Union Station. Another of our men picked up the tail in New York. Alessa caught a taxi and took it to a residential hotel. Rossi boarded the Staten Island Ferry. No one else followed either of them. Our man verified that their return tickets were for today. So Alessa will be back in town for your knitting circle tomorrow night.’

  ‘Do you think she retrieved the “take” from her asset in New York?’

  ‘I don’t want to speculate, but it seems very likely.’ Melinsky uncrossed his legs and pulled his chair up to the desk, leaning forward. ‘Tomorrow night you will have a babysitter, just in case,’ he said.

  My mouth went dry, and my already rapid heartbeat began to race.

  ‘You’ll have a new addition to your knitting group. She is an experienced agent and will be armed. She’s a good knitter, too, I understand!’ He smiled, but when I didn’t seem amused, he continued. ‘Whether or not you receive anything from Alessa, you’ll leave with our agent, you know, chatting, two women getting to know each other and such. Instead of going to the filling station, the two of you will walk further down Twenty-First to the Western Market, which is open late on Friday night.’

  And right next door to a police station, I thought. Just in case.

  ‘Our agent, whose cover name is Anne, by the way, will escort you out the back door of the market. Jack will be waiting there with a car to bring you to me. With what we expect, I hope. The name of our sleeper.’

  I was hanging up my coat when Ada answered the telephone in the hall.

  ‘She just got home,’ Ada said into the receiver. ‘Here she is.’ She handed the telephone to me. It was Myrna.

  ‘Betty’s test was negative, and she’s here safe and sound,’ Myrna said. ‘Soaking in the bath. What did you say to her? She seems quite calm.’

  ‘I talked some sense into her,’ I said. ‘It’s up to you and Lil to make it stick. She has to come to work tomorrow and behave as if she’s returned from an illness. If she can keep herself together she can beat this.’

  ‘I’ll tie her up and deliver her myself if I have to,’ Myrna said.

  ‘OK. Tell her I haven’t said a word to anyone, even Ruth and Brenda. No one ever needs to know.’

  ‘I’ve told everyone here she was wronged by an old beau. All the girls sympathize with that. Hey, I’ve got someone waiting for the phone, so I have to ring off.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Not necessary.’

  I replaced the receiver. I’d done all I could for Betty. Now it was up to her to behave like an adult woman, not a prisoner of her raising and the women’s magazines she pored over, and live her life the way she wanted to live it.

  I was beat from my dealings with Betty and Melinsky and nervous about meeting Alessa, maybe for the last time, tomorrow evening. I needed a good dinner, maybe an hour of radio – no news, thank you – and one of Phoebe’s Nembutals so I could sleep tonight. I wished I could have one Martini! Tomorrow promised to be a nerve-wracking day.

  As I went back to the kitchen for a glass of water I met Ada coming down the hall.

  ‘I wouldn’t go in there if I was you,’ she said and vanished into the lounge.

  I soon wished I’d listened to her.

  Dellaphine’s big Silvertone radio played gospel music softly as she finished arranging yeast rolls in a baking pan. The odor of roast chicken seasoned with onions and sage filled the room. Madeleine had arrived home from work. She was still dressed in office clothes, a neat green shirtwaist dress with a lace collar.

  Phoebe stood next to the table, her arms crossed, while Joe was trapped between the Hoosier cabinet and Phoebe, with no way to leave the kitchen, though he sure looked like he wanted to.

  Henry, who was clearly the source of whatever trouble was brewing, stood at the table with his laundry bag slumped on one of the kitchen chairs.

  ‘I don’t understand the problem,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve been to three laundries today, and not one of them is accepting any new customers! Have you ever heard of such a thing! One of those damn Chinks suggested I send my laundry home!’

  ‘Dellaphine doesn’t do any personal laundry,’ Phoebe said. ‘She has more than enough work to do: most of the cooking and cleaning, laundering the sheets and towels, queuing for groceries.’ Phoebe spoke firmly. She was clear-eyed, so she must not have dosed herself with laudanum today.

  ‘But I’d pay her extra!’

  ‘She’s not your laundress,’ Phoebe said. ‘You’re responsible for your own laundry.’

  Dellaphine didn’t say a word, but kept neatly lining up doughy rolls in the baking pan.

  Then, so help me, Henry looked right at Madeleine, and I waited for, I didn’t know what, some awful eruption. But Madeleine controlled her temper. She looked straight into Henry’s eyes.

  ‘I have a job, Mr Post,’ she said. ‘And it doesn’t include taking in laundry.’

  ‘So what am I supposed to do?’ Henry said, staring helplessly at his laundry bag.

  The kitchen timer dinged, and Phoebe went over to the stove, opening a path for Joe’s escape, which he took with alacrity.

  ‘The rest of us do our own laundry,’ I said to Henry. ‘There’s a perfectly good new Bendix washing machine in the basement and plenty of drying lines.’

  ‘But you’re women,’ Henry said.

  ‘Henry,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what. Over the weekend I’ll teach you to use the washing machine. One lesson should do it.’

  ‘What are we coming to,’ Henry said, ‘when a man has to do his own laundry! And what about ironing?’

  Dellaphine stood, the pan of rolls in her hand to set in the oven. ‘I been ironing since I was nine years old,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you how to iron. Once.’

  ‘You all get
out of this kitchen,’ Phoebe said, ‘and let Dellaphine and me get dinner on the table.’

  Henry and I joined Ada and Joe in the lounge.

  To signal that disaster was averted, I said, ‘I’m going to show Henry how to use the washing machine, and Dellaphine is going to teach him how to iron.’

  I should have known to keep my mouth shut. A hot red flush crawled up Henry’s neck and face, and we saw the ugliness of the anger he’d hidden in the kitchen.

  ‘These people, these Chink laundrymen, the Negroes, they’ll be begging to do our laundry again after the war, you wait and see!’

  ‘Shut up, Henry,’ Ada said as Joe turned up the volume on the radio to drown him out.

  Joe and I spent a few minutes alone together in the lounge after dinner. Or what passed for alone in that house. Phoebe and Ada were in the kitchen, making tea I assumed, because I heard the rattle of cups and saucers.

  Joe joined me on the sofa and I curled up in his arms.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘who washes your clothes? Somehow you escaped telling us.’

  Joe groaned. ‘One of my friends at work, his mother takes in laundry. I take my laundry to the office and pick it up two days later.’

  ‘Perhaps Henry could avoid the humiliation of women’s work if your woman would do his, too.’

  ‘I am not carrying Henry’s laundry bag anywhere. He deserves this lesson. Can we forget about washing and such for the few minutes we’ve been left in blessed solitude?’

  We kissed, the longest kiss we’d been able to share in many days. His soft beard nuzzled my face while he caressed my bottom with one hand, the one that wasn’t holding me close. I didn’t feel the usual tingle, though, I suppose because I was preoccupied with my Friday evening meeting with Alessa.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Joe asked. ‘You’re trembling.’ He pulled Phoebe’s embroidered throw over my shoulders.

  ‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘Work has been difficult, with this special project and with making sure the usual office stuff gets done, and one of my girls is out sick.’