Round Robin

by Joseph Flynn

  That made for some frustrating moments. But it was also exhilarating because going up against Robin was one of the rare occasions in his life when he felt challenged. He was bound and determined that someday he would best her.

  Besides that attraction, she made him laugh, even if it was usually at his own expense. That was okay, too. Everywhere he went, with precious few exceptions, people kowtowed to him. The boy wonder. The big brain. Nobody treated him like a person. Except Robin.

  She whanged him just like everybody else — and he loved her for it.

  Not that he expressed it. Not openly. Not in so many words. But one day when the lunch hour crush had run long for some reason David had been doodling sketches of his mother for the portrait he’d agreed to do. Looking up for a moment, he saw Robin. He wondered if anyone had ever done a portrait of her. He wondered if she’d ever been beautiful.

  He tried to look past the excess weight and see who she was underneath.

  While he observed her, his hand went to work on the sketchpad.

  When he looked at what he’d drawn he gasped.

  Robin had been beautiful. Or had he just drawn her that way? He looked back up to see if he was only kidding himself. No, he was sure the image he had drawn was an accurate representation of the way this woman had once looked.

  To prove it to himself, he started adding lines and tone to the sketch he’d just drawn, additions that would make it look the way Robin did now. With each stroke that brought the image closer to the present reality, David felt pain and sorrow. He realized that something awful must have happened to this woman — to go from who she’d been to who she was now — and the pain he felt must have been nothing compared to hers.

  David kept this insight strictly to himself. He felt sure Robin would throw him out on his ear and never let him return if he tried to talk to her about it. But from that day on he resolved to help her find the beautiful young woman she’d been and to become her once again.

  Even so, David wasn’t going to go to jail and wreck his life for Robin.

  There’d be no attempt on his part to crack the CIA’s computer system.

  David locked his sketchpad into his filing cabinet and logged onto his computer. What was the point of trying to break into one closely guarded agency of the government, he asked himself, when another left its doors wide open. He accessed the Internet, a network of data bases originally conceived for the Defense Department but now, in 1990, used by a growing number of academic institutions. There was talk that in a few years, say the mid-90s, even the general public would be online, but David thought that he might possibly be the first person to use the Internet to do private investigation.

  He accessed the Library of Congress and began looking for the name Manfred Welk.

  Robin’s father tapped at the door to the park before he left. He called out that the plumbing repair had been made and that her laundry had been folded and left in a basket on top of her dryer. She thanked him, grateful that he hadn’t opened the door.

  She watched him depart through the leaves of a ficus plant next to one of the park’s front windows. Dan Phinney waved to his daughter even though he couldn’t really see her. Robin had arranged the plantings so she could peer out but would be shielded by a canopy of greenery from anyone trying to see inside. Nevertheless, she gave her father a small, forlorn wave.

  When he was gone, she watched her fish swim back and forth. She wondered if they ever got frustrated, if they ever felt insanity creeping up on them, being confined in such a small pool. She didn’t think so. They swam too smoothly. Their overall behavior was too fluid. There was no sense of desperation about them. They got along well with each other. And why shouldn’t they? Their water was clear and warm. They had all the food they needed. Their world was free from predators. Life was perfect.

  Thanks to her, their keeper.

  Maybe living things weren’t meant to be kept, though.

  Robin felt she was coming to have a keeper of her own.

  And just when she was about to cry, Robin heard a soundtrack for her tears. Someone started playing a blues harmonica. Manfred? At first, she thought he’d put on a record, but when no other instruments joined in, when no vocalist sang along, she realized it was just him down there playing the instrument. Playing it very well, too. The music made her feel sadder and better all at the same time.

  Now, where would a guy like that have learned to play the blues? Then she thought: Where else? Prison. Maybe learning to play the blues was a correspondence course you could take wherever you were locked up in the world.

  Maybe she should learn it herself.

  She listened some more and lost herself in the healing melancholy of the music. After a while, she recognized the song. Billie Holliday. God Bless the Child. Was Manfred mocking her? No. The only way he could know about her demons was if her father had told him, and Daddy would never do that.

  Robin sat there and hoped he’d play all night, but he didn’t.

  Because a man strolled up the street and turned onto her walkway. She watched him as he approached her front door. The man was average height, just under six feet. He had a slim build, neatly cut brown hair, brown eyes, no eyeglasses, no facial hair. He wore a navy blue windbreaker, faded jeans and plain white sneakers. He had pleasant enough features, but Robin was sure that if he ever came into Mimi’s she’d forget what he looked like five minutes after serving him.

  Just before he got to the front door, the man startled her by smiling — nice even teeth, but not the blinding white of someone who smiled for a living — and she thought for a moment he’d seen her and was smiling at her. But then she realized that the man was looking down. He was smiling at Manfred, looking at him through a basement window.

  And the music stopped.

  Robin heard the outer door open and then the door to Manfred’s apartment.

  Then it all clicked for her. The guy who’d just come calling, he was the spy. The real thing. Someone who could blend into any crowd. Manfred’s contact … unless he was another musician come to play the blues. True, she didn’t see him bring an instrument, but one could be down there waiting for him. Or he could have a harmonica in his pocket. Maybe Manfred was out to reinvent the Harmonicats.

  Robin listened.

  She didn’t hear music. She heard voices. Indistinct voices.

  Then, with the music gone and pulled from her self-absorption, she smelled sauerkraut. Industrial strength. Commie-prison sauerkraut, for God’s sake.

  She hadn’t thought to ask old Manfred what kind of cooking he did, had she? Now she knew. Robin had wanted to stay in the park a while longer, maybe see if she could eavesdrop as long as she was there, but within minutes the smell of cooking, pickled cabbage drove her upstairs.

  Warner Lisle was a CIA agent.

  Blessed with pleasantly nondescript features, he could have been the recruiting poster boy for the Company, had it gone in for such things. The son of a fetching Berliner who’d married a GI serving in the Occupation Forces, Warner spoke perfect German. The recipient of a National Defense (i.e. CIA) Scholarship, he learned to speak perfect Russian.

  Warner was bright enough to have had a double major in college. His other area of interest — besides Russian language and culture — was aeronautical engineering. But when his three-year hitch with the Agency was up and his college debt repaid, the aerospace industry was in one of its cyclical slumps. No jobs available. So he stayed a spook.

  Not cold-blooded enough, by any means, to take on any of the really nasty jobs, he was nonetheless infiltrated into East Germany and told to see what he could see. Look for targets of opportunity. Soak up the gestalt of a front-line Communist state.

  That vague assignment lasted until someone got tired of seeing the East Germans take home truckloads of Olympic gold medals. At that point, Warner was assigned to find out just how they did it. At minimum, exposing Commie cheaters would be good propaganda. And you never knew, maybe something useful would be
uncovered. Say a chemical compound that could be quietly added to the seasoning of U.S. Army food to build up the troops.

  So Warner was assigned to become the first CIA jock-sniffer and ordered to look for some disaffected Marxist mesomorph who would be willing to spill the beans on his comrades.

  Warner found Manfred.

  He felt personally responsible for Manfred’s imprisonment.

  And he was determined to redeem himself before he left the Company in the not too distant future. Warner hadn’t found a job in aerospace at long last. Rather he would soon be making a number of very interesting models of flying machines for a special effects house in Hollywood.

  But he had to pay Manfred back first.

  Warner looked cautiously around the basement apartment before turning his attention to his expectant friend. He couldn’t imagine why anyone would bug this place, but old habits died hard.

  “Clean environment?” he asked.

  Manfred nodded.

  That was good enough for Warner. You had to trust that somebody who’d lost five years of his life due to casual treachery would be very careful these days.

  “We’re making progress,” Warner said.

  “You know where she is?”

  The big guy tried to keep his face impassive, but Warner could see the hope in his eyes.

  “Not yet. But we’ve learned your wife has gone back to using her maiden name. She’s using it for your little girl, too.”

  “Hannelore Krump?” Manfred asked.

  Warner shook his head.

  “No, your ex changed your daughter’s first name, too. It’s Bianca now.”

  “Bianca? What kind of name is that?”

  “It’s the one Mick Jagger’s ex has.”

  “Bianca Krump?” Manfred shuddered.

  “We’ve got the two of them hooked up with a guy named Horst Muehlmann, a/k/a The Bear.”

  “Muehlmann,” Manfred snorted. “A third-rate shotputter who’d be fourth-rate without his daily fistful of steroids.”

  Warner said quietly, “Horst doesn’t have any athletic standing these days except maybe in the smash-and-grab. He was suspected of doing a number of muggings in Magdeburg, but that was quite some time ago and when the victims wouldn’t testify all three of them moved on.”

  “My daughter,” Manfred said regretfully, “my little Hannelore, given a ridiculous name by a vindictive mother and living off money stolen by an incompetent clod of a shotputter.”

  Warner felt worse than Manfred looked. He also blamed himself for the little girl’s misfortunes. If he’d kept Manfred out of prison ... Well, he didn’t see any point in adding that the former Mrs. Welk had been fined for working as an unlicensed prostitute.

  “We’ll find them,” Warner said. “It won’t be long now. We’ll get your daughter back.”

  Manfred nodded his massive head solemnly.

  “Ja, please do.”

  Up in her own apartment, a short while later, Robin heard the blues harmonica resume. More wonderfully sweet and sad than ever, the music drifted up through the heating vents. Along with the warm air that Manfred had also supplied. She ought to be grateful to the guy, Robin thought. So what if he had spies dropping in? All spies did was whisper furtively. They didn’t throw loud parties and wreck your night’s sleep.

  Unfortunately, the scent of the sauerkraut wafted upward, too. But it wasn’t as strong up here, and Robin thought of a hint she could drop to Manfred about his cooking. It was just mean enough to make her grin. After all, she didn’t want to go all mushy about the guy.

  But, she thought, he sure must have some soul inside of all that bulk to play the harmonica that way.

  This time the music was interrupted by her phone. Robin picked it up, annoyed.

  “Hello,” she said abruptly.

  “What? Someone calls to find out how you are, and you bite her ear off?”

  It was Mimi.

  “I’m sorry,” Robin said. “I was just listening to music.”

  “So start the record over, dear.”

  Robin didn’t feel like explaining.

  She said, “I’m doing okay, Mimi. The doctor said just take it easy ... and lose sixty or seventy pounds.”

  “He didn’t!”

  “He did.”

  “But you’re not —”

  “Fat. Yes, I am.”

  “Not like some people.”

  “No, I’m fat like me.”

  “I would have said hefty.”

  “Mimi, can we talk about something else?”

  “That was one of the reasons I called. To tell you what that Tone Morello is up to.”

  Robin was incredulous.

  “You called to talk about Ant-knee? What, the idiot was in today?”

  “Yes, and looking for you.”

  “The guy never learns.”

  “He had a cameraman with him, Robin. He said he wanted to put you on TV.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No. Now, why would he want to do that? He can’t have anything good in mind.”

  “Maybe he wants me to do some grunts for his highlight films.”

  “Robin, don’t you dare.”

  “Come on, Mimi. I was kidding.”

  “Well, he made a nasty crack about you right into the camera.”

  Robin’s gloom was lifting. There was a challenge here. She was getting intrigued, wondering what that goof Ant-knee was up to this time.

  “What’d he say?”

  Mimi hesitated and then told her.

  Robin laughed, even if the crack stung a little too, coming on the heels of her doctor visit.

  “Miss Piggy’s body double? That’s pretty good. Too good for Ant-knee. He’s got somebody thinking up lines for him.”

  “I might get some grief for it,” Mimi said, “but I think I’m going to ban him.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Robin replied.

  “But he’s up to something.”

  “Yes, he is,” Robin said, feeling tough now, feeling much better really, “and whatever it is, I’ll be ready for it.”

  By the time Robin got off the phone with Mimi, she felt buoyant enough to tiptoe, if you could call it that when you got about on crutches, down to Manfred’s front door. Without making a sound, she left a can of air-freshener and a note for him.

  The note said: Try adding this to all of your recipes.

  Chapter 9

  Robin woke the next morning with a plan for Tone in mind and a delicious odor in her nose. Somebody had been baking. And the results had been delivered to her front door. She knew who the deliveryman had to be: Daddy.

  He’d seen that she’d been troubled yesterday, so he’d gone out to a bakery first thing this morning, just when they were taking everything out of the oven, and then he’d let himself into the building and left the package on her doorstep for her to find when she woke up.

  What a sweetheart.

  Robin crutched over to her front door in her pajamas, opened it and almost got jolted off her feet again.

  Daddy hadn’t been there, Manfred had.

  There was a plate of something redolent of apples and cinnamon and quite possibly God’s grace sitting just outside her door. Steam seeped out from the edges of the crisp white dish-towel that covered the plate. It must have been dropped off not more than a minute ago. Whatever it was, it smelled good enough to drop to the floor and eat right there.

  Except...

  Next to the plate lay the can of air freshener she’d left for Manfred last night. It was as crumpled as a discarded Dixie cup. Under the can was a note. Leaning against the doorframe, Robin carefully bent over and picked up the note.

  In a crabbed European-looking hand, it read: Took your advice. Squeezed every last drop into strudel. Let me know how it tastes.

  As with Robin’s note, a signature had not been added or necessary.

  Robin looked at the plate. And the can. Was he kidding her? Or trying to poison her for being smartass with him? />
  The safest thing to do with the stuff would be to just put it down her recently repaired garbage disposal. But it smelled sooo good. Then Robin smiled as she thought of an answer to the problem, one that fit in neatly with her other plan. What she needed was a food–taster ... and she knew just who it would be.

  “Hello, Nancy,” Robin said into the phone.

  “Well, isn’t this a surprise?” her sister asked. “Would you like to speak with Charlie, maybe ask him for a little favor?”

  Robin shook her head. That noodge Charlie. He hadn’t been able to keep her plea for help with the furnace from Nancy. But that would only make what Robin planned to do even sweeter.

  “Actually, I was wondering if I might ask you a favor, if you can spare a little time this morning and maybe later on today.”

  Nancy was properly suspicious, but curious, too.

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, I’m on crutches these days—I sprained my ankle—and I hate to bother Dad all the time, so I was wondering if you might give me a lift to work.”

  Nancy was silent a moment as she explored that idea for booby-traps.

  “I usually have a few extra minutes,” she finally said. “I suppose I could do that.” Then she probed further. “Anything else?”

  “Could I borrow your videocam?” Robin asked.

  “What for?” Nancy asked, the mistrust clear in her voice now.

  Robin told her sister about Tone and his cameraman, and outlined their previous skirmishes.

  “I want to have my own record of any interview Ant-knee does with me,” Robin said. “It occurred to me that tapes might be edited.”

  In fact, she knew this because Nancy was the only person she’d ever heard of who edited her home videos. Just as she put only the creme de la creme of still photos in her family albums.

  “So you want me to shoot this confrontation for you?” Nancy asked.

  “And edit it, if necessary.”

  Nancy considered the idea for a moment.

  “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Great. The way we’ll do it is, I’ll excuse myself to use the ladies’ room as soon as Ant-Knee shows up. I’ll give you a call from the kitchen and reappear when Mimi tells me you’ve arrived.”