by John Knoerle
Miss Julia finished me off with a deft triple knot and swabbed my mouth with a washrag doused in applejack. I was in heaven for half a second.
“The Director wants to see you,” said Schram.
“Now? Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“What about?”
“That’s not for me to say.”
The Director was, of course, J. Edgar Hoover. That he had sent the one FBI agent I had some respect for meant it was a friendly invitation, one I could refuse.
Sure I could.
I went to the kitchen sink and washed up, cleaned the blood off my shirt and coat best I could. They weren’t going to let me sit down with the Bulldog with a gat in my pocket so I handed Julia my pearl-handled six shooter.
“Get some sleep. Put this under your pillow and don’t answer the door.”
For once she didn’t argue. And that’s how I came to meet the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation wearing fifteen stitches of white cotton thread in my lower lip and a brown maintenance man’s uniform with a name patch that read Tony.
-----
Schram had a trail car. Two feebs in a Ford Sedan Coupe were parked behind his Buick Roadmaster. He walked over and spoke to them briefly while I waited on the street. The one in the passenger’s seat picked up the radio mike.
Our motorcade proceeded south towards Pennsylvania Avenue and the Department of Justice. My lip throbbed in time to the drumbeat in my temples. The warmth of the moonshine and Julia’s touch were gone, it was cold out and I was off to meet the Bulldog, late on a Sunday night.
“You’re a smart kid, Schroeder,” said Schram at the wheel, driving fast on the deserted streets, one hand on the wheel. “We hate your guts but we give you that.”
“Thanks.”
“Did you spot our tail on the streetcar? I bet the Director five bucks you’d sniff it out.”
I had not, but it seemed like Schram had a lot invested in my alleged criminal genius. Well, I had bested the Cleveland FBI and I suppose nobody likes being outsmarted by a dope.
I ran down the suspects in my head – the rowdy kids, the driver, the Negro maid.
“The maid. She looked tired after a long day’s work. But she was going the wrong direction, heading into all-white Georgetown, not away from it.”
Schram looked pleased, vindicated. But just as quickly his face tightened. “Let me be clear, Schroeder. That’s how I got my mind back in order, I got clear on the facts.”
“Okay.”
“I want to know your angle in all this, your payday.”
“Don’t have one, Agent Schram. I’m not that smart anymore. Figuring all the angles, playing both sides against the middle…it plumb wore me out.”
But Schram wasn’t listening. He was looking in the rearview mirror and growling. “Dumbshits.”
I turned around. The trail car had stopped at a red light. Schram took a hard right on two wheels. I clung to the door handle to avoid spilling into his lap.
“So what side did you come down on?” he shouted over the roar of the engine.
We weren’t so different, him and me. Two men scarred by war who tried to make sense of it in any way they could. He went bats, I got greedy. That we were now engaged in civil conversation while tearing down a side street at sixty miles an hour was a stirring tribute to something or other.
“I came down on our side,” I shouted.
“Why?”
The way he spat out the question gave me the feeling he was fed up, hellbent to outrun his trail car and keep heading south to Tierra del Fuego.
“Slow down and I’ll tell you.”
To my surprise Schram throttled back and let his trail car close distance. I repeated, in different words, what I’d told him in that puke-smelling Quonset hut in Parma, Ohio two years ago.
“They’re all bastards, Schram, you know that. The chest-thumpers and the speechifiers, the Commissar General of State Security and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. They’re bastards, they have to be,” I said. “But at least our bastards get swapped out every few years.”
Schram nodded along with my speech, then added an important clarification.
“Except for Hoover you mean.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
I pictured the Bulldog sweating me under hot lights, his face an inch from mine, lips curled, breath foul, barking questions about the Fed Bank Robbery. And what bullcrap were Julia and I up to, embarrassing the Agency in front of the national press?
But it wasn’t like that.
Two leather wing chairs sat in front of a desk the size of a pool table. J. Edgar Hoover sat behind the desk, his tie cinched up despite the late hour, shirt starched, hair parted. He had taken time to freshen up for my visit. Hoo boy.
This was about more than a few stray questions from a girl reporter. This was a full on sitdown at the adult table.
Frank Wisner’s wartime affair with Princess Stela was a barely-kept secret. Hoover figured to know about Wisner’s trip abroad and his arrival in London with the Vampire Princess. Did he know about the boy king and put two and two together? That would give the Director one helluva hole card.
Well, he wasn’t going to learn anything from me.
An aide escorted me to the chair on the right. Hoover didn’t look up from the important documents he was studying which, I noticed as I got closer, were late editions of several newspapers.
I sat there in silence for an eternity. Thirty seconds. When J. Edgar Hoover raised his meaty, marbled face and offered me a sawtooth grimace my blood ran cold. He really did look like a bulldog.
“Would you like a cocktail, Mr. Schroeder? I’m partial to Jack Daniels,” he said in an accent I couldn’t place, a potpourri of down south and nor’east.
“Me too. Sir.”
Hoover’s aide went to a credenza and used the small side of a jigger to measure something less than one fluid ounce into each highball glass. No ice. He served the Director first. I wasn’t sure whether to drink mine or dab it behind my ears. Hoover looked me over but didn’t comment on my odd appearance.
It was okeydoke so far. Except for that empty chair next to me.
“I’ll wager you didn’t know the Bureau’s pre-decessor agency was founded by a direct de-scendant of Napoleon.”
“No sir. I did not.”
“Attorney General Charles Bonaparte was the grandson of the French Emperor’s younger brother, the Prince of Westphalia. He established a force of special agents in 1908. He was quite a character, the AG.”
Hoover leaned back and unbuttoned his suit jacket. He was wearing, at close to midnight on Sunday night, a vest. “Teddy Roosevelt once boasted to him that he made all his Border Patrol applicants pass a marksmanship test. Charles said that he had a better idea.”
“And what was that sir?”
Hoover took a tiny nip of his JD neat. “He told Roosevelt to have the applicants shoot at each other and award jobs to the survivors.”
I laughed along with Hoover’s aide, who had doubtless heard this chestnut a hundred times. I was surprised. Even the Bulldog would have to slop on the charm now and then, if only for Presidents and Budget Chairmen. I was surprised that he thought me worth the effort.
“I have invited another guest to our late night stag party,” he said.
A door opened behind me. I heard soft murmurs and the rustle of clothing being removed. In another circumstance it might have sounded amorous. The office was carpeted so I didn’t get to enjoy the perverse pleasure of hearing my accuser’s footfalls echoing up behind me. I didn’t have to think very hard to figure out who it was. Hoover’s aide pulled back the empty chair and Commander Frederick Seifert took a seat.
I had been determined to give J. Edgar as good as I got. If he gave me guff about the bank job I would say the press liked it well enough – two mobsters dead and most of the money recovered. If the Director had a problem with my performance he should have said so at the time.
But my bravado dried up and blew away when I saw the stooped figure to my left. Frederick Seifert looked an old man now though I doubt he was sixty. I had ruined his life by convincing him to open the door of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland to The Schooler and my smartass self.
We robbed the joint, the only successful heist of a Fed Bank in history. That mob thug Jimmy Streets met his maker and the Mooney boys escaped to Ireland with fifty gees somehow made the whole sordid adventure jake in my mind. Just a high school prank, putting the principal’s car up on blocks.
Only the principal in this instance lost his job and reputation.
Seifert refused the Director’s offer of a cocktail. The chairs in front of the desk were positioned so that Seifert and I faced each other at an angle. Seifert looked at the wall. Nobody spoke.
Now that he had aged so I realized who Seifert had first reminded me of. Grandpa Jake, my father’s father, who migrated from the old country just before the war, after his wife passed away. He wouldn’t talk about how she died but we all knew it was something awful.
Nice, Schroeder. Nothing classier than stabbing Grampa in the back.
“Commander Seifert, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to you for my…bad behavior in Cleveland…at your bank.”
This was an extremely lame apology so I added, “I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”
Seifert looked at me for the first time. “I am indebted to the Director for the privilege of this meeting.”
Seifert then turned to Hoover. “But forgiveness is not mine to give. That is between you and your God.”
Cut. Full stop. Back up a step.
I needed to pray for forgiveness, true. Why then had Seifert addressed his remark to J. Edgar Hoover?
The way the Bureau played the story in the press was that the Federal Reserve bank job was part of their sting operation to roll up the Fulton Street mob. They wanted to take credit for my gunning down mobsters. G-men greasing Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger had made Hoover a national hero.
But the bank job was The Schooler’s idea, one I turned to my advantage. I looked over my shoulder to make sure Hoover’s aide had left the room. He had. Probably recording our conversation from a nearby control room but never mind.
“Commander, I made the decision to rob your bank. The FBI had nothing to do with it. It was The Schooler’s plan but I could have stopped it. And I did not.”
This was something less than a full confession. I left out the I-was-looking-for-a-fat-payday part. But I couldn’t get a word in edgewise once the two old boys got into it.
“So I was forced to walk the plank for an FBI sting operation that did not exist?” snapped Seifert.
“You let this green Marine talk his way inside and rob your bank,” snarled the Director. “In fact he did us all a favor by exposing your incompetence.”
It went on like that for a few minutes. Apparently Hoover had some longstanding grudge against the Federal Reserve Police. Seifert knew this and took offense. No question Seifert got the short end. Would he keep his mouth shut now that he knew the full story? I wouldn’t in his shoes.
The Director leaned forward when Seifert put both hands on the armrests of his chair, ready to launch.
“I understand you got blindsided by all this, Frederick.”
Hoover looked to me, his steely glare trapped in the jowly face of a debauched aristocrat. “I did as well, thanks to young Mister Schroeder.”
Hoover returned his gaze to Seifert. “Which is why I made a personal appeal to the President, asking that you be permitted to retire honorably, and with a full pension.”
Commander Seifert visibly deflated in his chair. After a long silence he said, “I didn’t know that, John.” He got up and shuffled off.
I felt forgiven by Seifert somehow. Or, more precisely, ignored. Which was fine by me. I braced myself for the second part of this potboiler, the Director’s quid pro quo. Which, as I understand it, is Latin for ‘where’s mine?’
Hoover looked up from his newspapers. “Thank you for coming Mr. Schroeder,” he said as his aide glided up behind me. “See that you get proper treatment for that lip.”
The aide pulled back my chair and escorted me briskly from the room.
Chapter Thirty-eight
I left J. Edgar Hoover’s office with a head fulla bees, I did. Special Agent Schram was waiting in an anteroom.
“How’d it go?”
“Okay. I guess.”
“Don’t guess, Schroeder. Learn the facts.”
“Sure thing.”
Schram didn’t care for my sarcasm. A long, angled look of sour appraisal was followed by a lean in and softly spoken words. “I have been to the top of the mountain, son. I believe you know that.”
“Yes sir.” I assumed he was referring to his role as commanding officer of the 21st Infantry in the Philippines, during the gruesome battle of Breakneck Ridge.
“I didn’t get to the crest until two days after we planted the flag. Had to get out and walk because we kept running over corpses. The walking was good. We found a Filipino who was still breathing and brought him around. You can’t kill those goddamn Bikols with a stick.”
Schram reached out and laid his big-knuckled hand on my shoulder. “But you know what the hardest part was?”
“No sir.”
“The hardest part was climbing back down the other side, to level ground. That was…very difficult.”
I wasn’t sure what Schram meant but, judging by how hard he was digging his thumb and forefinger into my trapezius muscle, he meant it plenty.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No sir,” I said, squirming, “not exactly.”
Schram’s face glazed over and his grip relaxed. I feared he had faded off like he used to do, but the old campaigner surfaced a moment later.
“You will, Schroeder, you’re a smart kid.”
And with that he was gone. Guess it was my night for cryptic encounters with older men.
I was escorted out of the anteroom by Hoover’s aide and down a hall. He opened a small door to what looked like a broom closet. Steep stairs stretched downward to a dimly-lit tunnel.
“It will take you to 9th Street,” said the aide, “the Director thought it best.”
I climbed down to the musty tunnel, alone with my thoughts, and a few rats. Why hadn’t Hoover asked me about the shooting incident on 28th Street? And why hadn’t he pressed me for dope about Wisner and Princess Stela? Too crude? Too soon?
The only thing I knew for certain was that I had been played, made to feel guilty then given absolution. ‘Hal did us a favor by exposing your incompetence,’ said Hoover to Seifert. The Director had dumped me in a boiling pot, then promptly fished me out. I owed him now.
My first instinct was to find a cheap hotel and lay low. The newsies would be gee’d up this close to the election. They would want to ask me embarrassing questions about Miss Julia’s embarrassing questions.
Tough shit. OPC Director Frank Wisner would be red flagging urgent cable traffic in London. NKVD Major Leonid Litinov has gone missing. Wisner might want to ask me a few questions about my old adversary. Something he would find difficult to do if I was holed up in the Fleabag Arms with a toilet on every floor.
I owed Frank Wisner. Frank Wisner was the one footing the bill. I would sneak into the Mayflower the way I sneaked out, delivery dock and service elevator. The skies had cleared, a nickel-bright half moon was high. I walked north on 9th Street.
Two blocks later a black Fleetwood glided up beside me. Bill Harvey leaned over and rolled down the passenger’s side window.
“Hey there sailor, new in town?”
I got in, we motored off, American flag flapping from the radio antenna. Harvey turned right on G Street and parked the Caddy by the pitch-dark hulk of the National Museum of Something or Other. He killed the lights but kept the motor running. The purring heat felt good.
“The Director
never works on Sunday. What gives?”
“Good question, Bill. I thought you and the Bulldog were on the outs. How’d you come to find me?”
“I’ll give you a hint, smartass. Georgetown, not two hours ago. We’re fleeing the scene but I wheeled into a dead end street. Why?”
I had wondered about Harvey’s odd maneuver at the time so I shut my yap and thought it through.
“Okay, you spotted a car in the rear view mirror, you took evasive action but the car followed. You turned down a dead end street because you wanted to determine if the follow car was pursuit or a tail. An unmarked cop car in pursuit would follow you down the dead end street, an FBI tail car would peek a look and keep on going.”
Harvey nodded. “The tail car followed us to the girl’s apartment but the feds lost interest in me once you two stepped out of the Caddy. I swung around and hung back. When I saw you climb into Schram’s Buick half an hour later I knew where you were headed.”
It was interesting to hear an account of the pursuit from both the fox and hound. Hound Schram suggested that Harvey was a lumbering fox. Fox Harvey suggested that was part of the plan.
“That’s a fascinating and informative account, Bill. I appreciate your taking time away from interrogating a senior NKVD officer about all-important spy networks to bring me up to date.”
“Up yours, Schroeder.”
“And yours as well.”
Harvey pulled a cigarette from his pack of Pall Malls, rolled it between his fingers. “Yeah, I got bad news. I couldn’t rouse Leonid, had to take him to Georgetown Hospital.”
“What?”
“He’s a Soviet diplomat, fuckstick. He dies in the trunk of my car, my nine lives are up.”
“He was playing possum!”
“I bent his wrist back to the breaking point, he didn’t wince.”
“Of course he didn’t. What’d you tell the cops?”
“I pinched his passport, showed them his Beretta with the silencer and told them he was a Russian gunrunner posing as a diplomat. That should put him on ice till the election’s over.”
