Louise's Lies

by Sarah R. Shaber

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Since the war began Stinson had worked undercover for us, mining the embassy building for information under the noses of its Swiss caretakers. Saturday night you and your friend Mr Prager were in the bar when Stinson’s body was discovered by – who was it?’

  ‘Walt, the bus driver.’

  ‘The barkeep was too frightened to call the police until after the bar closed. Stupid boy.’

  ‘He’d been ill,’ I said. ‘He was afraid of losing his job. He was just doing what he thought his boss wanted him to.’

  ‘Still, it was stupid. Anyway, then, when the customers in the bar were questioned, they insisted they didn’t know much about Stinson. And Al Becker said he had just recently met the man and didn’t know where he worked. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said. ‘And some of the other people in the bar had connections to the German embassy. Leo Maxwell’s father was pro-Nazi and hobnobbed with the German ambassador. He received the Order of the German Eagle from him. Heck, even Walt was a regular. His route on Massachusetts Avenue took him past the embassy every day for years. He and Chippy routinely met at the Baron Steuben for drinks on Saturday nights.’

  ‘I need some coffee,’ Miss Osborne said.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I said. At the coffee pot I poured two cups. Our day’s allotment of sugar was gone so I just added milk to both of them.

  ‘I wish this had a slosh of bourbon in it,’ Miss Osborne said as she took the cup from me.

  ‘Sergeant Royal doesn’t know that Stinson worked for us,’ I added. ‘He searched Stinson’s room in his boarding house thoroughly and found nothing but personal stuff. And magazines on farming. His landlady said he went home to his family’s farm in Maryland every chance he got.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Miss Stinson said. ‘Let’s pray your friend Sergeant Royal continues to accept that. If our involvement gets out you’ll be able to smell the stink all the way to the White House. Let me think for a minute.’ She scribbled in her steno pad for a few minutes, and then looked up at me.

  ‘There’s no question,’ she said. ‘You must accept Al Becker’s invitation to visit the zoo. Make friends with him. As Sergeant Royal said, pump him for information.’

  She was right; whether I liked it or not, I had to do this. I felt like a rat, letting Sergeant Royal think I was working for him while reporting directly back to Miss Osborne. The man trusted me with the details of this case and I was sneaking around behind his back on behalf of OSS. I wasn’t lying to him exactly, but I wasn’t telling him what I knew about Floyd Stinson, either.

  The Connecticut Avenue bus stopped at the entrance to the National Zoo. Al was waiting for me at the bus stop and gave me his hand to step off the bottom step. He seemed very pleased to see me and I felt another pang of guilt, and a bit of trepidation. I sincerely hoped that Al had no romantic intentions. I was willing to do almost anything Miss Osborne asked me – my job was important to me – but I disliked deceiving the man. Even if he was a murderer.

  ‘I’m glad the weather is better today,’ Al said. ‘It will make our tour much more enjoyable.’

  ‘Thank you for doing this,’ I said. ‘I know it was last minute. My boss gave me the afternoon off because I worked so many hours when our staff started dropping like flies with the flu.’

  ‘No problem,’ Al said. ‘I’ve worked a lot of extra hours too. That’s what we get for being healthy, I suppose.’

  He led me over to an odd-looking little vehicle. It was more like a cart, actually, with two seats, three wheels and a steering stick.

  ‘This beats walking,’ Al said, offering me a seat.

  ‘What on earth is it?’

  ‘A golf cart. It was invented out in California for golfers who can’t walk the course. We have three. They’re godsends. They get us around the grounds without using much gas. They only go about fifteen miles an hour, so they are wonderful for giving tours to special people.’

  So I was a special person? I resolved again to keep my distance. My plan was to be very friendly, but with no hint of romance.

  Al got into the cart beside me and turned a key in the ignition. The cart started with a lurch and we tootled down the tree-lined driveway toward the main zoo compound.

  ‘Do you know anything about the history of the zoo?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really. Just that it’s part of the Smithsonian.’

  ‘You’re correct about that. The first zoo was right on the Mall in front of the Smithsonian Castle. The animals were kept in cages and corrals for people to see. It was very primitive, as you can imagine. Then when the government bought the land that became Rock Creek Park, they earmarked a parcel north of the Taft Bridge for the zoo. Now, thanks to the Works Progress Administration, which constructed four new buildings for us, we have a modern zoo inhabited by more than twenty-five hundred animals.’

  ‘I love it,’ I said. ‘I’d never been to a zoo until I moved here.’

  ‘Most of the animals are inside because of the cold weather,’ he said, pulling over to an outdoor area of rocks and water. ‘But the seals and beavers are in their element.’

  For a few minutes we watched the animals. Two beavers were building a dam, industriously delivering mud to the structure and then patting it into place with their flat tails.

  ‘Once they’re done with this dam their zookeeper will tear it down. Dams block the flow of water and mess up the pumps. But the beavers don’t seem to mind. They just build them up all over again.’

  Back in the golf cart we continued down the road until we came to the building that housed the great apes. We pulled over and parked. Al again gave me his hand to help me out of the cart. The man had manners, I gave him that. As we passed by the famous bronze statue of an anteater I felt my pulse begin to race. How silly, I was more excited about seeing a baby gorilla than I was worried about being part of a murder investigation!

  Al opened the heavy door for me and I went inside the building. ‘The mother and baby are in a private room, we’ll go there, but let’s take a look at the whole family first.’

  I found myself in front of the barred wall that separated spectators from the great apes. The other three walls were constructed from cinder blocks, with a doorway that led to an outside play area. The cage was huge, but it still seemed too small for the animals in it. Much as I loved watching them I was bothered by their confinement. A big wooden structure in the middle gave them something to climb on. The cement floor was thickly covered in straw. A riotous jungle, populated by giraffes and zebras, was painted in bright colors on the back wall. I wondered if the apes were intelligent enough to miss their home in Africa.

  I found myself gripping the handrail as Sultan, the big silverback, approached the bars of the cage and latched on to them, cocking his head to regard me. His dark brown, liquid eyes fixed on me as if he was curious about me. I had been taught not to believe in evolution, but I couldn’t mistake the feeling of kinship that looking into Sultan’s eyes gave me. It made me wonder.

  Sultan was an enormous, powerful animal. I remembered reading about an incident when he became so enraged at a zoo visitor making faces at him that the building had to be emptied until he calmed down. He bruised himself throwing his body up against the bars trying to get at his tormenter.

  Two of Sultan’s ‘wives’, as the newspapers insisted on calling them, and a half-grown son comprised the rest of Sultan’s family. Another ‘wife’, Eshe, and her new baby, Daudi, had been sequestered after the birth.

  ‘Ready to see the baby?’ Al asked.

  ‘Yes, please!’

  Al led me to an inconspicuous door toward the back of the building. He had to force the doorknob up and push hard to get the door open. ‘This has been broken for weeks. I’ve put a work order in but we’re short on maintenance men and I don’t know when it will get fixed. It’s not safe, anyone could come in here.’

  Inside the small room cluttered with bags of animal feed, crates of vegeta
bles, water buckets and other equipment was a cage about the size of a small car. A large window at the back of the cage looked out over the gorilla play area. A few tree branches and a rubber ball crowded the floor. A female gorilla clutching her tiny baby curled up in a nest of straw in a corner. The baby gorilla’s miniature hands wrapped around her neck just like a human baby holding on to its mother.

  ‘Meet Eshe and Daudi,’ Al said.

  ‘The baby is adorable,’ I said. I went right up to the cage.

  ‘Don’t put your hands inside,’ Al said.

  Daudi stretched out a hand toward me, and it was all I could do not to try to touch him. His little eyes sparkled at me, and the furrows in his head made him look like a deep thinker. His mother kept her eye on me, but didn’t seem concerned about their safety.

  ‘Here,’ Al said, handing me an apple he’d rummaged out of a box, ‘just roll this into the cage and watch what happens.’

  When the apple came rolling across the cage floor Eshe leaped from the nest with Daudi hanging on to her for dear life. She scooped up the apple, went back to her nest and crunched on it happily.

  ‘Why do you have to isolate them?’ I asked. ‘Would the others hurt the baby?’

  ‘Not on purpose,’ Al said. ‘All primates love their babies. But gorillas roughhouse, and Daudi could be injured accidentally. So we’ll wait until he’s about three months old before we introduce him to the troop. He’ll be able to fend for himself by then.’

  Al drove me back to the bus stop in the golf cart. ‘Listen,’ he said, as he handed me down from the cart, ‘I can have the whole afternoon off. Why don’t you come back with me to my place for a cup of coffee or tea? And I’ve got cookies you could help me eat.’

  I must have looked alarmed, because he grinned at me. ‘Never fear,’ he said, ‘my intentions are honorable. I’d appreciate your company. I don’t have much of a social life. Most of my old friends in my building ignore me now because I’m German.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ But I did know. I was going. We hadn’t talked yet about Stinson’s murder, and that was the reason I was here.

  ‘Besides, I’m sure you must have a boyfriend,’ Al said.

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I’m meeting him for dinner.’ I had no plans to meet Joe soon, but I wanted to put a time limit on this visit. ‘But there’s plenty of time for cookies. I’d be happy to come.’

  ‘Good! My car is in the parking lot near the Director’s office. It’s just a short walk.’

  ‘My goodness!’ I said when I saw Al’s car. It was a Ford convertible roadster, cobalt blue with a white top. Late thirties, I thought.

  ‘Like it?’ he asked.

  ‘Who wouldn’t!’

  ‘Hop in,’ he said, opening the door for me. I slid on to the black leather seat. Al joined me on the driver’s side. ‘This is my pride and joy,’ he said. ‘I bought it in 1938, after my wife died, hoping to cheer myself up.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ I said. ‘I’m a widow myself. My husband died of pneumonia before the war.’

  ‘We both know how hard it is, then,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ It might sound insensitive of me, but the worst part about Bill’s death was losing my independence, my adulthood even. I had to move out of the apartment over the Western Union telegraph office where Bill worked and back into my childhood bedroom. Even though I had a junior college business degree I never had a job. I graduated during the Depression when there were few jobs. Anyway, Bill and I married – we’d been childhood sweethearts – and only one person in a family was permitted to work. When I returned home after his death I was expected to pitch into the family business, a smelly fish camp that I loathed, without compensation. I had no money of my own and no privacy. It seemed as though my only hope for a better life was to marry for a second time. Certainly my parents urged me to look for a husband – any single man with a job would do. Then the war came. I found a good job of my own at the Wilmington Shipbuilding Company and then moved to Washington, DC, many miles and a world away from coastal North Carolina. I loved my family, but I sure would hate to go home for anything other than a visit. Doing well in my current position was the only way I could think of to be employable after the war. Which reminded me, I was supposed to be questioning Al, not becoming his friend. Strolling about the zoo and eating cookies was just my cover.

  We parked in front of a handsome apartment building just across the street from the Wardman Park Hotel. It was mere feet away from the entrance to the Taft Bridge. You could stand on the bridge and look north to the zoo grounds and south to the thick vegetation and tall trees of the park many feet below.

  ‘What a fine building,’ I said to Al, as he locked up his car.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘It was built by the Woodward family, you know, of Woodward & Lothrop. They wanted a place to live away from downtown.’

  Colorful tile and plaster columns in a rococo style framed the entrance door of carved wood. Inside in the lobby columns with the same rococo design reached to the tall ceiling. Al called the lift and threw open a polished brass door when it arrived with a clang. When we entered a woman in a smart coat and hat was already inside. Al tipped his hat to her. ‘Hello, Maureen,’ he said. She didn’t answer him, just scowled, and followed that insult by looking me over from head to foot and then turning away.

  She got off on the fifth floor. ‘Sorry,’ Al said. ‘She was one of my wife’s best friends. Thank goodness Mary didn’t live long enough to go through this.’

  ‘Is there nothing you can do?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ he answered. ‘Many of my friends just melted away when the war began. There’s a men’s club in the basement of the building, with a bar and card tables. I have been told I’m not welcome there. I can’t seem to prove to them that I’m a real American. I’m too old to join the military. The Civil Defense Corps rejected my application.’

  We got off on the seventh floor. Al led me to a door down the hall, taking out a key to unlock it. ‘It’s just a one-bedroom,’ he said. ‘That’s all I need now.’ We went inside his small apartment. It was modest but nicely decorated.

  ‘Let me take your coat,’ he said. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’ I shrugged off my coat, tucking my scarf and gloves in a pocket, and he hung it on a coatrack near the door. I sat on a comfortable chair while he went into the kitchen to fix coffee. I noticed that he was a reader. A short stack of paperback books rested on the table next to my chair. The Ox-Bow Incident, bookmarked with an envelope, topped the pile.

  ‘I don’t want to sound like I’m whining,’ Al said from the kitchen. ‘It could be much worse. I could still be in Germany, living under the Nazis. I’m treated well at the zoo, and I have a few good friends left.’

  He brought out a plate of cookies. ‘Oatmeal molasses cookies, no sugar needed,’ he said.

  ‘That’s too many for me,’ I said.

  ‘Please eat,’ he said. ‘I like to bake, and I can’t eat it all myself. Although sometimes I take leftovers to work.’

  I took a bite. They were delicious.

  ‘These are so good. I might be able to finish the plate after all,’ I said.

  ‘Good.’ Al took a cookie too, then sipped at his coffee. But then he put down his cup and folded his arms into his body.

  ‘Louise,’ he said. ‘I confess that I asked you here today for more than an afternoon visit.’

  Oh no! He did have romantic intentions!

  ‘I lied to the police, and to you, and to the other witnesses at the bar when Floyd died. When he was murdered.’ He squeezed his eyes closed for a minute, as if struggling not to shed tears. ‘It was a lie of omission,’ he said. ‘But still a lie. I was afraid that if I told the police they might suspect I was involved in Floyd’s death. I wasn’t, and naturally when your friend Sergeant Royal finds out, as he will soon, he will probably be even more suspicious of me.’ Royal already did know what I expected Al to reveal to me, but I didn’
t tell Al that.

  ‘You’re not obliged to confess anything to me, I’m not the police,’ I said, hoping that Al would confide even more to me than he would want the police to know.

  ‘What I neglected to tell Royal,’ he continued, ‘was that when I came to the States after the First World War I worked for the German embassy. For over ten years, first as a bicycle messenger and then as the nighttime telephone operator. I knew Floyd well for the two years that our service overlapped. We played chess often even then.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘I was just a boy when I enlisted in Kaiser Wilhelm’s army. The war was a nightmare. I found myself in the trenches, living in mud and filth like a rat in a city sewer. I wore a gas mask even when I slept. Once when the French broke through and rushed my position I shot and bayoneted … I don’t know, several French soldiers, most of them boys like me.’

  ‘How awful.’

  ‘When the war was over Germany was mayhem. The economy was destroyed and people were starving. I had no family so I happily came to the States to work in our embassy. After I’d been here for a few months I had no intention of returning to Germany. And I never have and never will.’

  ‘And you haven’t told Royal this?’

  ‘No. I plan to tomorrow. I was a fool to keep this from him. I had no reason to kill Floyd. We just played chess. We met at the Baron Steuben because all of us, the German embassy employees, once drank there for the German beer and schnapps. The bar didn’t have meals, but they brought in pretzels and bread baked at a German bakery and imported cheese and sausages, too. I kept going there after I left the embassy to see my friends, that’s all. After this war started I stopped, but then the bar abandoned everything German and I began to meet Floyd there for chess again.’