Paramour

by Gerald Petievich

  Landry reached into his jacket pocket and took out the pass section photograph of Marilyn Kasindorf. "Do you remember doing this woman's hair? She came in here August nineteenth."

  She looked at him sternly for a moment. "The nineteenth... Oh, yes. I remember her."

  "Can you tell me anything about her?"

  She handed the photograph back to him. "What did she do?"

  "It's a confidential inquiry."

  "I shouldn't really be talking about a customer."

  "She's a forger, ma'am. Social Security checks."

  Her eyes widened. "God, I hope I didn't take a check from her." She reached under the counter, pulled out a metal box, and thumbed through some papers for a moment. The other stylists had lowered radio volumes and silenced hair dryers to eavesdrop. "No," she said finally. "I have six checks and twelve credit card drafts listed for the nineteenth, but I know all the customers. She must have paid in cash."

  "Lucky for you," Landry said. "Do you remember anything about her?"

  "Lemme see the photograph again."

  He handed her the photo.

  "This isn't a very good picture of her," she said. "Nice person, friendly. It was the first time she'd been in here."

  "What did she talk about?"

  "Art. I think she mentioned something about an art show. God, I wonder if she buys paintings by forging checks. I saw a TV show one time about people who did that kind of thing."

  "This woman's name is Marilyn. Marilyn Kasindorf. Does that ring a bell?"

  "Forgers use different names, don't they?"

  "Usually," Landry said. "Are you sure she'd never been in here before?"

  She nodded. "I know every regular customer."

  Landry shrugged. "Thanks for the help."

  "What should I do if she comes in here again?" the woman asked.

  "She won't be back," Landry said on his way to the door.

  Powers used one of his free airline travel coupons for the trip to San Francisco. Though tired, he was unable to sleep during the flight. He couldn't get Marilyn off his mind.

  The weather was clear and sunny, much cooler than Washington, as Powers stepped off the airplane. At the terminal gift shop he purchased a map of the city and took a bus to the Summit Hotel on Post Street.

  Powers had stayed at the Summit on numerous Secret Service protection assignments. It was a modest place, a remodeled fleabag catering to civil servants, trial witnesses, and tourists trying to save a buck. Just as he'd figured, the Samoan room clerk, who'd come to recognize him over the years, assigned him a room at the government discount without asking to see his Secret Service identification. With the savings on the room, Powers would be able to pay for taxis and meals.

  The San Francisco Library, a massive gray stone edifice with ten Corinthian columns, was located on Larkin Street across from the modern federal building. Powers entered through the glass double doors. He made his way past a large book return desk manned by two young women, each of whom had a telephone instrument on her desk. He noted the library hours, which were posted on a sign at the desk, and strolled past the stacks to the other side of the library. There was another telephone on a small desk in the children's section and one on a wall in periodicals.

  At a bank of pay telephones in the children's section, he dropped change and dialed the library number from Marilyn's phone bill. It began to ring. Allowing the receiver to hang from its cord rather than setting it back on the hook, he stepped out of the booth. There was no sound of ringing, and none of the employees within his sight on the first floor answered a phone. Quickly, he moved up the stairs to the general reference area. An elderly gray-haired woman wearing an earth mother dress moved from her desk to one in the corner and picked up the receiver. She said hello a couple of times, then set the receiver back on the cradle and returned to her desk.

  Powers wandered around for a while until the woman left her desk to assist a customer, then hurried to the desk in the corner and checked the number on the telephone instrument. It was the one he'd dialed.

  He left the library and took a long walk to his favorite restaurant, the Via Reggio on Lombard Street. Though the place was busy, the owner, Bill Smith, a slim, curly-haired young Irishman, greeted him warmly and showed him to a seat. Powers ordered and ate a leisurely lunch of fried squid and pasta, refusing wine because he didn't feel like drinking. Smith joined him and they chatted about the time President Reagan had lunched at the restaurant and the Secret Service agents had lined up an off-duty party with the lady gym instructors at the classy Fog City Health Club down the street.

  After lunch, Powers killed the rest of the day and early evening as a tourist strolling along Fisherman's Wharf.

  At 6 P.M. he took a cable car to the Hertz rental car office on Montgomery Street. There he rented a compact car and drove it to the library. He found a parking place across the street.

  In the library, there was a man sitting at the desk in the corner on the second level. He was about twenty-five, of medium height, and had a thick dishwater beard. His hair was shoulder length and drawn back into a ponytail, and he was wearing Levi's, a SAVE THE WHALES T-shirt, and granny glasses. Powers returned to the car and waited.

  At 9 P.M. a security guard in a khaki uniform came to the front door and opened it for each of the last few remaining library customers. Then the lights, upstairs first, then downstairs, were dimmed. A few minutes later, the guard opened the front door from the inside and several employees, including the man with the ponytail, came out the front door. They walked together, chatting amiably, to the corner of McAllister and Larkin and then went in different directions.

  Powers started the engine and drove slowly to the corner. The man with the ponytail moved briskly down the street. In the middle of the block he entered a well-lit parking lot and climbed into a primer-gray Volkswagen beetle. He backed out of the parking space and drove out of the driveway onto McAllister. Powers accelerated and followed him through downtown to the Mission district. On a street of two-story Victorian-style houses, he pulled into an alley and parked the Volkswagen. He climbed out, locked the car, and entered the front door of the house without using a key.

  Powers found a parking space for his car around the corner. Returning to the house, he opened the door and climbed a steep flight of stairs to a landing. There were four closed doors lining a hallway that extended to the end of the building. To Powers, it looked like a private residence whose bedrooms had been converted to rentals.

  He knocked on the closest door.

  "Yes?" a woman said.

  "I'm looking for the man who works at the library," he said.

  "End of the hall on your right," she said.

  Powers moved to the door and knocked. The man opened the door almost immediately.

  "My name is Jack Powers. Forgive me for bothering you at this late hour, but I'm conducting an investigation. May I step in?"

  "Is this some kind of sales pitch?"

  "I assure you it's not. May I come in where we can talk without being overheard?"

  "I guess so," the man said after a moment. "But only because I'm curious."

  Powers stepped in, and the man closed the door behind him. The room had a marred wood floor and was small and well-lit. In front of the window was an artist's easel with a nearly finished oil painting of a red-haired young girl standing behind the counter in a flower shop. A spattered canvas drop cloth covered half the floor, and artist's brushes and tubes of oil paint, filled and half-filled canvases, and cans of turpentine covered a small dining table. The walls, from floor to ceiling, were covered with oil paintings of differing sizes: realistic portraits of men, women, and children all done in subdued pastels like the painting on the easel. On the other side of the room was a mattress on the floor and a clock radio. The room smelled like turpentine, oil paint, and marijuana.

  "I served in the U.S. Secret Service for over twenty years, but I'm here unofficially."

  "So what's this all about?"


  "Do you know Marilyn Kasindorf?"

  "I don't know anyone by that name."

  On the wall to Powers's right was an oil painting of a woman standing near a motorcycle on a dark street, an impressionistic work with slashing lines of dark reds and grays and the yellowish glimmer of a streetlight. The woman looked like Marilyn Kasindorf. Powers raised his eyebrows.

  The artist's face turned red. "Marilyn's my stepsister," he said warily.

  "Are you aware she defected?"

  "I was told."

  "By whom?"

  "The people she works for informed me," the young man said.

  "Look. I was assigned to investigate her. We met and became ... friends, and then suddenly she defected. Now I'm trying to figure out what happened."

  "Some CIA people came here a few days ago."

  "What did they say?"

  "Just that she'd defected. I couldn't believe it, but they showed me a Teletype about her defection. I felt like I'd been slammed in the stomach with a baseball bat. They said the furniture in Marilyn's apartment belonged to the CIA, and it wouldn't be necessary for me to travel to Washington to dispose of it."

  "Sounds a little strange."

  "Not really. Marilyn told me when she moved into the place a few months ago it was being furnished by the Company. She said her assignment would only last a few months. She sold her own furniture when she went to Saudi Arabia. That was her last job before Washington-the American Embassy in Riyadh."

  "What about her personal effects?" Powers asked.

  "In the other room. They just arrived this morning. I don't really understand who you are or why you are here."

  "I've been assigned to determine why a longtime government employee would defect," Powers said. "May I ask your name?"

  "Jim Chilcott."

  "Mr. Chilcott, I have a job to do. I'm only here to see if you can throw some light on what happened."

  "I don't believe she defected. I say it's bullshit," Chilcott said angrily. "I should be the one conducting the fucking investigation. "

  "I'm sorry."

  "Lemme tell you something. My sister was ... is ... a flag waver. She gave the patriotic speech in high school." He turned his head. "She didn't defect. She must be on some kind of a mission. She would never voluntarily defect. Give up everything."

  "Did she mention to you that she was going to Europe a couple of weeks ago?" Powers said.

  "She hadn't called me for a while. She used to phone me at the library because I don't have a telephone here. It disturbs my work-"

  "If she was going to Europe on a vacation," Powers interrupted, "would she have told you?"

  "Absolutely. That's why this whole thing is so strange. Marilyn and I both attended art school," he said, his voice cracking. "My mother wanted us to be artists but Marilyn went her own way. She wanted to do something different." Chilcott made his way into the tiny kitchen area, ran water, and splashed it on his face. He tore a paper towel from a holder and dried himself.

  "Did she ever mention an art exhibition in Kassel, Germany-the Documenta?"

  "It's a well-known contemporary art exhibition, but I don't remember ever discussing it with her."

  "How did she sound the last time you spoke with her?"

  "Fine. Just like always."

  "What did you talk about?"

  "She asked about my work. We always discuss art," Chilcott said.

  "I'd like you to think back. Was there anything she mentioned the last few times you spoke with her that you thought out of the ordinary?"

  Chilcott stood for a moment, rubbing his chin. "Nothing," he said finally. "That's what I find so strange. We shared everything. It was just the two of us in the family, and we shared everything. She told me about who she was dating. We held nothing back. If she was in some kind of trouble she would have told me. Even ... even if she'd been doing something illegal, she'd have told me."

  Powers moved to a shelf near the window and picked up a small framed, slightly out-of-focus baseball team photograph.

  Marilyn was standing third from the right in a group of women wearing Levi's, shorts, and T-shirts with Langley Kittens scrawled across the front. She had a softball in her right hand and her arm was drawn back, ready to throw.

  "Marilyn plays on a CIA softball team," Chilcott said.

  "Can you think of any reason why she would defect?" Powers said, staring at the photo.

  Chilcott shook his head. "I'll never believe she's a traitor."

  "May I take this photograph? I'll return it to you."

  "I guess."

  Powers slipped the photograph into his shirt pocket and walked to the door.

  "The last coupla times we spoke I got the impression that she'd been dating. She said he was older than her. Other than that there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in what she told me, what we talked about."

  "What's his name?"

  "I never asked."

  "Did she mention anything specific about him?" Powers said.

  "She didn't go into much detail ... as if she didn't want to talk about him. I assumed it was because he was married, so I didn't press the issue. Oh, yeah. She mentioned something about him having a very important job."

  "By the way," Powers, said opening the door. "The Agency. With whom did you speak?"

  "Green and Jones. They said they were from Langley."

  Downstairs, Powers walked across the street, unlocked the rental car, and climbed in behind the wheel. Leaning back in the seat, he pondered: If Marilyn was so close to her brother, wouldn't she have wanted to speak to him one last time before she defected? He took out the baseball team photograph and turned on the dome light. In the photo, Marilyn's hair was pulled back and she was wearing a baseball hat cocked to one side. She looked different, the way people do in photographs, particularly poor-quality Polaroids. It occurred to him, as some thought buried and suddenly coming into his consciousness, that he would never see her again. And he had the familiar feeling of having forgotten something ... a name on the tip of one's tongue sensation. Hell, maybe he was going crazy. He might as well. Everything else in his life seemed to have turned to shit.

  Powers looked up at the house. Chilcott was standing at the window looking down at him. Suddenly uncomfortable, Powers shoved the photograph back in his shirt pocket, started the engine, and drove away, telling himself that the trip to San Francisco had been for nothing.

  At the corner, Powers turned onto Mission Street to head back to the hotel. He drove for a mile or so to Market Street in the direction of the bay. At a traffic light he checked the rearview mirror. There was a compact car behind him. Unless he was mistaken, the same car had been behind him on Mission.

  Powers cruised through a yellow light. The car sped up, drove through the intersection on the red light, and accelerated past him, its single occupant staring straight ahead. It was a gray Toyota. At the next corner, it turned off-just what an experienced surveillant would do if he found himself too close to his prey. Powers took his foot off the accelerator. As his car slowed, a black van about a quarter block ahead of him pulled into the right lane and slowed down too.

  Powers changed lanes, accelerated past the van, and turned right. He moderated his speed and kept his eye on the rearview mirror. A block behind, the Toyota pulled out from a side street and turned in his direction, then turned off again as the van came into view. Powers felt his breath quicken. He was being followed by professionals, he guessed, because of the street paralleling technique.

  Powers's mind raced. During a security advance he'd done for President Reagan's visit to the San Francisco convention center a Secret Service tech man had informed him that the area across the street from the center was a communications "dead spot." Radios could neither transmit nor receive because of the unique geography of the location, and special transmitting equipment had to be set up to ensure that the presidential party had reliable communications. Powers made his decision. Turning south, he made his way to the conve
ntion center and pulled into an alley next to a brownstone building over whose entrance was a neon sign, Ted Duffy's Grill. He climbed out of the car and hurried down the alley. Entering the rear entrance to the tavern, he knew whoever was following him would be unable to communicate with the other cars on the surveillance.

  Inside the two customers at the bar, both elderly men wearing Giants baseball hats, were talking with the bartender, a tall man with wavy hair combed straight back. Powers sat down on a bar stool close to the door. The bartender set a cocktail napkin in front of him. "What'll ya have, sport?"

  "Scotch and water."

  "You got it."

  As the bartender mixed the drink, Powers surveyed the bar. The bartender set the drink down, collected money, and returned to the other customers. Powers picked up the drink and moved to a cocktail table next to the window. Because of the bar's darkness, he could look out to the street without fear of being seen by anyone outside.

  For the next two hours, as customers came and went, the van and the Toyota alternately cruised past the bar every few minutes, checking, as Powers surmised, to see if his car was still parked in the alley. It would only be a matter of time before whoever was in charge of the surveillance felt it was necessary to verify he was inside and hadn't slipped away unnoticed.

  A half hour later, an athletic-looking man wearing a windbreaker entered the front door. He had a well-trimmed mustache and closely cropped hair that gave him a military appearance. At any rate, he didn't look like he belonged in a neighborhood bar. As Powers would have done under the same circumstances, the man was careful not to make eye contact. Without so much as looking in Powers's direction, he walked directly past the bar to the restroom. After an appropriate amount of time, he came out, walked out the door, and moved past the window to Powers's right.

  Powers left the table and hurried out the rear door. The man continued on the sidewalk, passing the mouth of the alley. Powers turned right and, breaking into a jog, made his way along a rutted sluiceway at the rear of the businesses. He stopped at a driveway crossing the sidewalk. There was a gray Toyota like the one the man had been driving parked two doors down, toward Market Street. Powers ducked back from the sidewalk and stepped behind an industrial trash receptacle.