The Spy

by Garbo Norman

  “That had nothing to do with loving you. I just couldn’t live with you.”

  “I know.”

  “No you don’t. If you did, you couldn’t have done that to me. Do you know what it’s like to lose someone you love?”

  “Yes.”

  She realized what she had said. “I’m sorry. But at least you didn’t think I was dead.”

  “Do you think that made it any easier? It made it worse. Dead is dead and once you accept it you can go on from there. But I couldn’t go anywhere. I was stuck all the way back there, loving you. I couldn’t have you and I didn’t want anyone else. Do you know what that’s like?”

  She did not say anything and they stayed that way in the darkened room, she, still lying beneath the covers, he, kneeling on the floor beside her bed. Outside, a police siren wailed as it went by.

  Angela reached out and touched his shoulder. “I know it’s your voice. I hear it. I recognize it. I’d know it anywhere. But I still can’t believe it’s really you.”

  “Believe it.”

  “May I… ?” She hesitated. “May I see your face?”

  “It’s not important. It’s just a face.”

  “Please.”

  Moving heavily, he got up and closed the blinds. Then he turned on a small lamp and knelt beside the bed once more. Watching her eyes, he could tell nothing. What if she had come to him with another face? he wondered. How would he feel? But it was impossible for him to even imagine her looking any differently than she did.

  “I think I’ve seen you,” she said and was back to whispering again. “I think I’ve seen you somewhere.”

  “You have.”

  “Where?”

  “At the museum. On a bus. In a restaurant”

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Yes. The restaurant. I remember the restaurant. This man was looking at me from across the room, and for a moment his eyes — I swear I had this crazy feeling about his eyes. I didn’t know why or what, but I kept thinking about them for the rest of the day. And that night I dreamed about you. It was awful “

  He smiled. “Thanks.”

  “I cried all night in my sleep. I was a mess in the morning. In my dream I kept calling you, but you were running and wouldn’t stop.”

  “I have been running.”

  She sat up in bed and touched his face. “You look so young. You look thirty years old.”

  “I feel sixty.”

  “And that big, beautiful sword of a nose. It’s gone.”

  “I had to pay double for that.”

  She suddenly lay back and pulled the covers over the lower part of her face. “My God! I must look like your mother.”

  “You look like you, beautiful,” he said softly, and again felt his throat clotted with emotion.

  “Please don’t look at me.”

  “There’s nothing else I want to’ do.”

  “Not yet. I’m not ready for that yet. Give me a little time. .Please, Richard. Turn out the light.”

  He did as she asked and they were in the dark once more. She found his hand and held it, pressing hard, searching out bones, knuckles, tendons, all his. “I’m not just dreaming?”

  “No.”

  “Swear it.”

  “I swear you’re not dreaming.”

  She sighed. “You don’t know how often I have.”

  “I love you.”

  “You shouldn’t.” She wept softly. “When Tony came and told me you were dead, I hated him. Later, I hated myself. I was like a character in a soap opera. I had left you for all the wrong reasons and now you were dead.”

  “You weren’t wrong.”

  “Please. Please let me say this. I’ve thought and dreamed about saying it for so long, but who expected this kind of miracle? So please.”

  He felt her hand, warming him in the darkness. A wind had come up and it rattled the blinds at the barred window. Tonight, at least, he was on the right side of the bars. “All right,” he said, and waited for her to go on.

  It took her a moment. “When someone you love dies,” she said, “it makes you think. So I thought. I thought about our life together and saw what a fool I’d been. It wasn’t enough that I had love, I had to have everything else, too. I loved and married you for what you were, then tried to change you because it was hard to live with. And because you refused to change, I left.” She shook her head tiredly. “It wasn’t easy for me to learn, but I’ve learned.”

  He heard her crying” again.

  “Why did you wait so long?” She wept. “Were you punishing me?”

  “No. Just myself. I wasn’t sure how you felt, anyway. And you were being watched. You still are. They had you transferred here from the Coast just for bait. And they were right. Finally, I had to come.”.

  He leaned forward, felt her wet cheeks and kissed her. It was their first kiss.

  “I read about Tony,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know how close you were. Was he sick very long?”

  “He wasn’t sick at all.”

  “But it said in the papers …”

  “It says a lot of things in the papers.” He did not really want to talk about it now but it had to be done. “Tony was murdered.”

  Her breath went out. “Oh, no. By whom?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I have to find out. And before whoever it is finds me.” Burke rose from the floor and stretched i out beside her on the bedcovers. “You never had any hint you I were being watched?”

  “No. Never. But what is it? Why are you in such trouble?”

  “It’s very complicated”

  She was silent He felt for her face, fingers touching eyes, nose, lips, chin — a blind man seeking sight. Her cheeks, at last, were dry. “I’m really not sure why they want me,” he said. “I thought at first it was because they were afraid I knew something potentially damaging, but now I think it has to be more. I’ve been given too high a priority. Too many are involved. Too many have died. There has to be something else.”

  “Couldn’t you simply go away somewhere?” she asked. “I mean, just disappear and to hell with them?”

  “Not unless I was willing to spend the rest of my life running, hiding, and waiting for a bullet in the head. Besides,” he added wearily, “I’ve gotten others into it now. I couldn’t just run out on them.”

  Turning slightly, she drew him closer and held him. They lay this way; he above the covers, she beneath.

  Suddenly, there were things he had to know. “But if it were possible,” he said, “if I somehow could get away somewhere, would you go with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even knowing what you do?”

  “I never look gift miracles in the mouth.”

  “You’d leave your job, your work?”

  “My work is hardly a calling.”

  “And what about the tall, dark-haired guy with the moustache?”

  “Who?”

  But he had felt her body tighten, and waited.

  “You sneaky bastard,” she said, “Once a spy …”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “I couldn’t help it. Even dead. I had to look through your bedroom window once. Just to see you.”

  “How …” she stopped. “How much did you see?”

  He could not answer that.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered and turned away from him. “I feel a little sick.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” he lied, remembering the extinction he had felt.

  “I’ll never be able to look at you again.”

  “Yes you will,” he said, and switched on the bed lamp. “Richard, that’s cruel.”

  Gently he turned her so that she faced him again. “Who is he?”

  “Didn’t you check him out?” she said flatly “I didn’t want to know. I was dead.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m no longer dead.”.

  The lamplight soft on her face, she frowned as though adding up an expensive bill. “I work for him,” she said tonelessl
y. “He’s married, but we had a kind of arrangement. It fitted both our needs. He was never you. No one could ever be you for me I again. But I could at least laugh with him, share, talk, feel like ! a woman. After Tony said you were dead, I punished myself for , a long time. I wanted to bury myself. I almost did. Paul helped [ lift me out of it.” Her mouth fell open and she sighed. “And that’s pretty much the whole story.”

  Burke was silent. So his name was Paul, he thought, and felt I something dark go out of him. An exorcism? But there were no [devils here, just the usual clay.

  “I love you,” she said. “I’ve never stopped.” He touched her lips with his fingers, still blind even with the fight.

  “What’s going to happen to us?’ “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “And you’re sure we can’t run?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Oh, Lord … Lord,” she whispered and gave him a kiss as [dizzying as the one they had shared earlier, except that the (strangeness was out of it this time, some of the new uncertainty. Burke breathed a sweetness that had floated on the air one hot summer night long ago. “Let’s go back,” he said. “Let’s go back at least three of these last goddamned years.”

  They did. And somewhere in the middle, as if born out of the regret and hurt of every mistake he had ever made, like an offering he did not deserve and had never expected, some small hope stirred in him again and he thought, maybe, just maybe it can still be all right.

  He was ready to leave at first light, about an hour before the watcher was due.

  “Please don’t die on me again,” she said.

  “Not even as a joke.”

  She was holding him hard. “When will I see you?”

  “I don’t know, but you can count on it.”

  “I will,” she said.

  Chapter 13

  Burke called the answering service and asked if there were any messages for Arthur Radin. “Yes, Mr. Radin,” said the operator. “Edgar Burns called and said he would like to speak with you as soon as possible.”

  “What time did the call come in?”

  “At 9:08 this morning.”

  “Thank you,” Burke said.

  At exactly 12:08, he called David Tomschin’s assigned number, a service station booth on Second Avenue and Sixtieth Street. He heard the receiver picked up on the first ring.’ “David?” he said.

  “Yeah.” The tone was flat, thick.

  “Is anything wrong? I haven’t heard from you in a while. “You okay?”

  There was no answer and Burke thought the line had gone dead.

  “David, are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve been locked up,” said David hoarsely.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been jailed. I’ve been stuck in a goddamned dungeon for almost two weeks. My girl, too No phone calls, no lawyers, no nothing. What happened to the Bill of Rights?”

  He stopped and Burke could hear him breathing heavily. “Who did it? Who picked you up?”

  “That bald, pink-faced guy I told you I kept seeing. Always smokes a pipe. He said his name was Ellman. Sam Ellman. You know him?”

  “I once met him, but it was years ago.” Burke took a moment. “I’m sorry, David. Did he put much pressure on you? Are you all right?”

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell him anything. I just said I hadn’t seen or spoken with you since the hospital and stuck with it.”

  “When did you get out?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Your girl, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did they let you go?”

  “Dolores, my girl, was finally able to get someone to call a lawyer she knew. He went to the District Attorney’s office and threatened to make a stink. Ellman was sore as hell but had to let us out.”

  “Did he say why they were looking for me?”

  “Yeah. He invented some crap about you turning into a double-agent or something. He made you sound like the latest model Benedict Arnold. The bastard’s Jewish, and he even appealed to our mutual Jewishness to get me to tell him what he wanted. You wouldn’t believe some of the things that came out of his mouth. He gave me this whole bit about how great America has been to him and his family after the pogroms of Europe, and how there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for the country. And he said that I, as a Jew, should feel the same way, that Russia was persecuting the Jews even today, and that you’d sold out to the Russians. Which meant that in protecting you, I was hurting my own people.” David laughed harshly. “I mean, the guy was really reaching.”

  David fell silent and Burke waited.

  “The funny thing is,” David went on, “that after awhile he was actually starting to remind me a little of this uncle I’ve got — Uncle Louie — same bald head and pink face, same phoney, salesman’s personality, same flag-waving about what the country’s done for the Jews. I swear he even gave my Dolores a TV set while she was in the hole so she wouldn’t have to miss any of her soap operas. Now is that a sweet little ole’ landsman, or isn’t it?”

  David made a small sound deep in his throat that may have started out as a laugh, but reached Burke as something quite different.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  David did not answer.

  “David?”

  “No, I’m not okay,” David blurted hoarsely, his voice twisted with a sudden fear and trembling. “I’m scared. I’m scared shitless. I can’t eat or sleep and my insides are jelly. All I keep doing is looking over my shoulder. I’m afraid that bald son of a bitch isn’t through with me.” He took some breathing time. “What do you think. You know about these things. It’s your goddamned business. Do you think he’ll pick me up again?”

  Burke did not answer at once. He was beginning to feel like the original man in the glass booth. Something came over the’ wire like the whispering in a forest, and he could almost see David’s fear. “I’m not going to lie to you. He probably will.”

  “Oh, God,” David whispered.

  “I’m sorry I had to get you into this.”

  “I’m not blaming you. It’s not your fault. I just don’t know how to handle this. I’m scared of what I might say if they ever really went to work on me. Just being in that lousy hole almost put me out of my skull. I guess I’m claustrophobic or something.” He stopped, breathing heavily against the mouthpiece. “I know I can’t really hurt you any,” he rushed on. “We already burned your picture negative and I don’t know anything to give them but a lousy answering service number. But I keep thinking of those two guys we buried up in the Catskills. What if I really busted and tola them about that? I mean I’m the one who shot them, for Jesus’s sake! I could spend the rest of my goddamned life in the slammer.”

  “Take it easy, David. They haven’t got you, and you haven’t told anybody anything yet.”

  “Yeah, but they might, and I might”

  Burke was silent “I can’t just sit and wait to be picked up again,” David moaned. “I can’t take that chance. I know me and I know the kind of shape I’m in. I’m not proud of it I wish I could be tougher. But why kid myself? I’m not tough. Not in that way. So I’ve got to do something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got to get out of it. I’ve got to lose them. I’ve got to go away somewhere until it all blows over, or you settle it one way or another. I’ve got enough money. I can just hole-up somewhere under another name and write.”

  “It’s not that simple, David.”

  “Why not? What’s to stop me from packing a bag, pulling some cash out of the bank, and taking off for California some night?”

  Burke sighed. “You’re not going to lose them that easily. They probably have you under surveillance this minute.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone following me. I don’t see anyone now.”

  “I told you once. The only time you’ll see them is when they want you to. Take a look out the booth. Is there an
yone sitting in a car, walking a dog, reading a paper, standing in front of a store, or just strolling past?”

  After a moment, David said, “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “They’re all here. I guess it could be any one of them.”

  “Or none,” said Burke. “They’re not that obvious. I just wanted you to have an idea of your chances.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? They’ll bury me if I’m picked up again.”

  The silence on the line was heavy as a scent To Burke, it stretched and hung almost palpably.

  “I didn’t say it was impossible,” he said at last. “It can be done. But I’d have to help you.”

  “You kidding me?”

  “I haven’t seen a surveillance yet that a good pro couldn’t break out of.”

  “Shit. That’s probably just what Ellman wants. It’s a real sucker move. I haven’t gone through all this crap just so the bastards can pick you up trying to help me.““Listen, David …”’ “Forget it.”

  “Will you shut up a minute and listen to me. I’m not making any noble gestures. I happen to think you’re right. If you’re picked up again, they will bury you. And that’s not going to do either of us any good.”

  “But what if Ellman set the whole thing up? I mean, couldn’t he have fixed it so Dolores could get a message out, have us released, and then pull you into just this kind of trap?”

  “Of course. In fact that’s exactly what I figure he did do. Don’t you think I know that? I know you’re the cheese in this thing. But I happen to be a very tricky little mouse.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “You don’t have to,” said Burke and his mind was far ahead, working.

  “Please,” David begged. “I feel like such a crybaby, such a weak sister.”

  “Now cut that out. You’ve been fine. They’ve put the big squeeze on and you’ve given them nothing, not a damn thing. I just want to get you out of this while we’re both still ahead.”

  “What about the others? What about Lilly, Pam, and Hank? What’s happening to them?”

  “Nothing. At least nothing like the kind of thing you’ve been through. They’re under surveillance, of course, but you seem to be the one they’re concentrating on.”

  “But why me?”