Louise's Lies

by Sarah R. Shaber

  ‘I understand, but the police are bound to suspect you.’

  ‘You were there. Wasn’t I stunned when I found Floyd’s body?’

  ‘Yes, yes you were.’

  ‘And I came into the bar long after it opened. When was I supposed to have killed Floyd? You’d think that if I had I wouldn’t have shown up at all.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ I said. ‘I’m sure when you tell Sergeant Royal the truth that will work in your favor.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  I knew I should stay objective, but I believed him. The fact that he didn’t tell Royal that he had worked at the embassy, and with Floyd, wasn’t evidence. Without a motive or opportunity it meant nothing.

  I parted from Al with a handshake at the door of his building, refusing his offer of a lift home. I wanted to be alone to think. It wasn’t dusk yet, and not as cold as it had been, so I decided to walk across the Taft Bridge to the bus stop on the other side to catch a bus back to the OSS compound.

  The Taft Bridge was a glorious structure, an arched bridge built in Classical Revival style. It carried Connecticut Avenue over Rock Creek Gorge, towering many feet above Rock Creek and the park. Two pairs of stone lions stood guard, each pair over an entrance. Tall black lampposts capped with eagles reaching their wings toward the sky studded the long expanse of the bridge. A wide pedestrian sidewalk ran down each side of the roadway.

  Halfway across I paused and looked over the bridge rail and down into Rock Creek Park. Most of the trees were bare of leaves but were so densely packed I couldn’t see through them to the ground. A horse trailer with its ramp down was parked below me. A park ranger on horseback must be patrolling the trails that snaked through the park.

  When I looked up to continue my walk I quickly turned my back to hide my face. Across the road, on the other pedestrian sidewalk, Mavis Forrester strode along, heading across the bridge in the opposite direction. Once she passed me I turned back around. Mavis marched more than walked, eyes straight ahead, with her shoulder bag gripped in one hand. She wore her mink with a cashmere scarf wrapped loosely around her neck. She didn’t see me, and I didn’t hail her. Instead I wondered what on earth she was doing this far northwest. She was blocks away from her apartment and even further away from the Library of Congress.

  Instinct told me not to let her spot me, so in case she looked back I turned back to the bridge railing and grabbed on to a streetlight, leaning over as if watching something down below. After a minute I glanced back at her. She was already across the bridge and on the street, still walking quickly and purposefully. My training spoke to me and I went after her, thinking I’d tail her until she got to her destination. I was curious about her. After all, she’d been in the bar when Floyd Stinson’s corpse was found, too.

  I walked as quickly as I could, but my stride was no match for hers. I was going to lose her, damn it, and I couldn’t break into a run without attracting attention. Mavis stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and jaywalked across the street toward Al Becker’s building. Could she possibly be visiting Al? And if Mavis knew Al, what did that mean? Might she have known Floyd Stinson too?

  Mavis didn’t go in the front door to the apartment house, but quickened her pace as she went around the building. I followed her, half running now because she could no longer see me. As I rounded the side of the building I didn’t see her anywhere. I grabbed at the handle to the back door of Al’s building, but it was locked. I kicked it in frustration, and then looked up the street. I didn’t know for sure if she’d gone inside, for just on the other side of the building a maze of streets stretched away in several directions. She could have vanished from sight among them.

  In frustration I pulled on the door handle again, then, fuming over losing Mavis, I trudged back toward the bridge and crossed over it. While waiting for my bus I found a pay phone and called Sergeant Royal.

  We met for dinner at a mom-and-pop Chinese restaurant off Virginia Avenue near George Washington University. Sergeant Royal lowered himself into his chair, wincing as his knee joints bent. The waiter came over with his pad. ‘Double bourbon on the rocks, Jim Beam,’ Royal said.

  ‘I’ll have a martini,’ I said. ‘No olive. Practically no vermouth. And separate checks, please.’

  Royal grinned at me. ‘We’re going dutch? You’re a modern girl, then?’

  ‘Mostly,’ I answered. ‘Besides, I called you and asked you to meet me.’

  ‘Damn good idea, too,’ he said, spreading his napkin over his lap and tucking it into his belt. He looked suspiciously at the menu.

  ‘I’ve never had Chinese food before,’ he said. ‘I have a feeling I’m not going to like it.’

  ‘Let me order for you,’ I said. ‘You’ll enjoy it, I promise.’

  The waiter dropped off our drinks and asked for our order.

  ‘Chinese fried chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans for the gentleman,’ I said. ‘I’ll have egg foo yung. And egg rolls to start for both of us.’

  ‘I hope you have something useful to report after your afternoon with Al Becker,’ Royal said after the waiter had left our table. ‘I’m stymied.’

  ‘Sergeant Royal,’ I began.

  He put a finger to his lips. ‘Call me Harvey. Surely we know each other well enough. Besides, I’d just as soon not tip off anyone here that I’m a policeman.’

  ‘OK. Harvey. I guess I want you to know that I think Al is innocent of the murder.’

  ‘Based on what?’

  ‘He told me all about his past, about working for the German embassy, about knowing Floyd Stinson for years, everything he’d hidden from you. He said he just didn’t think, that he was afraid you’d suspect him. He told me that he was going to find you and tell you everything in the morning.’

  ‘Did he now? Well, let’s see if he turns up.’

  Our waiter interrupted us with the egg rolls.

  ‘Do I have to eat one of these?’ Royal asked.

  ‘Yes.’ I picked one up, dipped it in sauce and crunched into it. Royal, eyeing his roll dubiously, followed suit.

  ‘This is OK,’ he said. ‘Sort of like fried cabbage. Now tell me why you think Stinson is innocent.’

  ‘The man has lived here for years. He’s a US citizen. He loves his work – you should have seen the pleasure he took in giving me a tour of the zoo. He’s being treated badly by old friends because he’s German. And he just accepts it.’

  ‘That’s sweet, Louise, but it’s meaningless.’

  ‘What facts do you have that implicate him? That he knew Stinson for years? Does that mean he murdered him?’

  ‘It doesn’t. But Al is the only one of the folks in the bar that knew Stinson.’

  ‘Why are you limiting your suspects to the bar customers? We’re just witnesses to the discovery of the body. Cal was the only one who knew for sure the body was behind the bar.’

  ‘My dear girl,’ he said, ‘any one of the customers could have come in the back door before the place opened, murdered Stinson, dragged him behind the bar, run off, then come back later to see what had happened after the bar opened.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘Do you remember how cold it was? The street was deserted. We canvased the neighborhood and no one saw anyone suspicious. Or Cal could have let the murderer in. Or left the door unlocked. That boy doesn’t have much between his ears.’

  The waiter arrived with our meals. After his first reluctant bite of his Chinese fried chicken, Royal dug in and ate every bit of it.

  ‘This tastes like no fried chicken I’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘What are these flavors?’

  ‘I don’t know them all, but garlic, I’m sure, Chinese five spice, soy sauce and lots more. Want to taste my egg foo yung?’

  ‘No thanks. I like my eggs for breakfast.’

  After the waiter cleared our plates we both ordered coffee.

  ‘When our dinner came I had the feeling you had more to tell me,’ Royal said.

  ‘When I was
walking over the Taft Bridge I saw Mavis Forrester coming across from the other direction.’

  ‘Really? You’re sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘That’s blocks away from her apartment.’

  ‘I don’t think she was walking for her health. She moved very purposefully.’

  ‘Did you see where she went?’

  ‘No. The first thing I did was turn my back to her so she wouldn’t recognize me. But I waited too long to start tailing her. I couldn’t catch up to her.’

  ‘You don’t think she was going to see Al Becker!’

  ‘I wondered that too. But she didn’t go in the main door of his building, she went around the corner. By the time I got there she was nowhere in sight. The back door to Al’s building was locked. Someone could have been waiting for her and let her in, I suppose. But the streets around the building are crowded with row houses and small businesses. She could have gone into any of them.’

  Royal tapped his teaspoon on the table, then pulled out his notebook and pencil. He scribbled in his notebook for a few seconds. He seemed to make some kind of decision before he spoke to me.

  ‘About Mavis,’ he said. ‘The FBI check came back on her. I had assumed she must have some money of her own. You should see her apartment. But do you know, her mother was a cleaning woman! No father’s name on her birth certificate. She graduated from a Catholic high school at the top of her class. She doesn’t just work at the Library of Congress, either; she’s the head of the circulation department. She’s got top security clearance and not a blemish on her record.’

  ‘Her salary couldn’t possibly pay for that ring she’s wearing.’

  ‘I noticed that rock too. Maybe she has a sugar daddy.’ Harvey suddenly blushed crimson. ‘I apologize, Louise, for my language.’

  ‘For Pete’s sake, I’m not a child. I know what a sugar daddy is.’

  ‘And the Maxwells, you should see what the FBI’s got on them! My God, the entire family was in bed with the Nazis before the war. They were charter members of the German American Bund and America First. They don’t have the money they used to, either. What with the Depression and all.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why Leo Maxwell wants to marry the Scott girl. She’s likely to get a chunk of her husband’s fortune when they divorce.’

  If I was an honest woman who deserved the trust that Harvey placed in me, now was the time to tell him that Stinson worked for OSS and was ransacking the old German embassy for anything of intelligence value. Which made it very unlikely, in my opinion, that the ‘suspects’ drinking in the bar that night had anything to do with Stinson’s death, either one of them as an individual or several of them as a group, including Al. Al was a clerk at the zoo, not a German operative. And an agent would never have returned to the scene of an operation, or be so careless as to be spotted by a bystander.

  We beckoned to a waitress for refills, but she shook her head. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘we’re out of today’s coffee ration.’

  Out on the sidewalk we stood stamping our feet and pulling on gloves.

  ‘Let me give you a ride,’ Royal said. ‘It’s still awfully cold out.’

  I didn’t want him to know I was spending another night at OSS. He didn’t know what branch I’d transferred to and I wanted to keep it that way.

  ‘I can catch a bus,’ I said. ‘There’ll be one right along.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘if you say so.’ He turned up his collar and limped across the street to his beat-up woody. I headed for the corner and the bus stop.

  The bus driver must have seen me coming because he waited for me, idling the big blue-and-white rig. There wasn’t another soul on board. Maybe he just wanted company.

  When the door opened I had my foot on the first step when I recognized the driver.

  ‘Hey there,’ Walt said. ‘I didn’t know you were so friendly with that policeman. Did you have dinner together and chat about the murder?’

  I’d passed my limited spycraft course with flying colors, and my instructor would have approved of me. I didn’t miss a beat, just kept climbing up the steps.

  ‘I just ran into him,’ I said. ‘We were friends before what happened at the Baron Steuben. Besides, what business is it of yours?’

  Walt turned to me. He hadn’t shaved today and his eyes were bleary. I hoped he hadn’t been drinking. I slid into the seat at the front of the bus and directly across the aisle from the driver. I wanted to keep an eye on Walt. If he looked shaky at all I was getting off this bus. There were no other passengers, and I figured his guard was down.

  ‘Sorry, sister,’ he said, ‘you’re right, it ain’t my business. Most everything’s not my business. I just drive a bus. I’m not the kind of person who gets to know things.’

  Walt revved the bus, as if it was a sports car, and we peeled away from the bus stop.

  ‘Slow down,’ I said. ‘You’ve been drinking.’

  ‘It’s just you and me. I could drive this route blindfolded with one hand behind my back. I’ve been doing this for years. Besides, Capital Transit would never fire me. There aren’t enough drivers as it is and they ain’t going to hire colored men.’

  But Walt did slow down. We passed by the Baron Steuben Inn. The neon martini sign was lit, so it must be open. Cars were parked outside up and down both sides of the street.

  ‘Cal could charge admission, if he wanted to, for a tour of the back of his bar,’ Walt said. ‘The place is packed every night now. The last time Chippy and I stopped by Cal asked us to sit at the bar and keep our regular table open for bigger spenders. It’s the story of my life: “Get out of the way, Walt, you’re nobody.”’

  I recognized the Maxwell mansion as we passed it. The upper floors were dark, but the ground-floor windows leaked light around the blackout curtains. Walt slowed down and gestured toward it as we passed it.

  ‘You remember the rich guy from the bar? That’s his place. Or rather his daddy’s. Before the war this whole block full of mansions, including the German embassy, would be lit up like Christmas trees. You could hear bands playing inside, see men and women in tuxedos and evening dresses on the patios. All their servants used to ride my bus. You should have heard the stories they told!’

  Walt pulled to a stop at a bus stop where no one was waiting. He reached under his seat and pulled out a bottle of Four Roses. ‘I got my one bottle of whiskey for the week today,’ he said, waving it around.

  ‘Stop it, Walt,’ I said.

  ‘Or what?’ he answered. ‘I told you Capital Transit will never fire me. I know how much I can drink and still steer this jalopy.’ But he didn’t take a drink from the bottle, stuffing it back under his seat. ‘You know which one of these mansions is the German embassy?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s got seventy rooms in it. Seventy! Thirty bedrooms! And we got army guys guarding it. And the Swiss are taking good care of it. What kind of sense does that make? We should grab it and sell everything in it.’

  ‘It’s against international law.’

  ‘Did you know that there’s millions of dollars in there somewhere? The Germans used it to pay off their spies and informers.’

  ‘I heard that. It’s just another Washington rumor.’ We were still idling at the curb. ‘Walt, shouldn’t we be moving?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, shifting his gears. The bus shot away from the curb.

  ‘Cut it out!’

  ‘You see any other vehicles? Calm down, you’re safe with me.’

  I calculated the earliest stop I could get off this bus. I didn’t want to freeze, but I didn’t want to die wrapped around a streetlamp, either.

  The conference room in Que building was wonderfully warm, heated by the camp stove in the corner, lit by the glow of its coal fire. I counted three other female bodies on cots, and another empty cot for me. I just took off my shoes, coat and scarf and slid under my blanket. I didn’t want to wake anyone.

  ‘Glad to see you,’ Miss Osborne
whispered to me from the next cot.

  ‘I hope I didn’t wake you!’

  ‘Not at all. I was wondering if I should send out an arctic patrol with a dog sled to look for you.’

  ‘Sorry! I had dinner with Sergeant Royal.’

  ‘If you didn’t learn anything critical let’s talk about it in the morning.’

  That was fine with me. I was bone-tired, cold and frustrated. I think I fell asleep before my head even touched the pillow.

  SEVEN

  ‘Are the eggs hot?’ Merle asked me.

  ‘I would say lukewarm,’ I answered. ‘And powdered. But the bacon is good. And there’s strawberry jam for the toast.’

  ‘There seemed to be a full complement of cooks in the kitchen this morning, thank God,’ Miss Osborne said. ‘The food has been so awful the last couple of days.’

  The OSS cafeteria was about half-full of people chattering and reading newspapers while they ate breakfast. The flu crisis must be waning. Maybe we’d be able to sleep in our own beds tonight. Even better, the temperature was above freezing. We could see people on the streets again. And the zoo animals would venture outside their animal houses. Remembering the zoo made me think about Al and his sad situation. He was a murder suspect only because he was a German by birth and he knew the victim. Lying to conceal his background only worsened his situation.

  ‘Miss Osborne,’ I said, as the three of us bused our table, ‘I need to brief you soon about the project we’ve been working on. I have a concern we need to talk about.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Merle, will you finish the sample card this morning while I talk with Louise?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘I thought that was done yesterday,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll talk about it when Merle is finished,’ she answered.

  Miss Osborne’s office was as small as mine, but it was wallpapered with maps of Europe stuck full of pins and samples of the black propaganda we’d produced in the few months since the Morale Operations branch had been established. It was an impressive display, but I knew it would be nothing compared to what we would need to do to camouflage the coming invasion. I figured we’d be spending lots of nights at the office, and not due to the weather.