by Ed Gorman
"I'll be fine, Mom. Really." I kissed her, and then I gave Dad a peck on the cheek. "'Bye, honey," I said to him, and he gave me a mock punch in the belly. "Look, Mom, Dad's blushing."
I stepped over to the grave and touched it a final time. So long, Robert.
Then I walked over to my car. I wanted to find out who the woman in the Nash was.
***
I called Jeff Cronin's office. Wasn't in. I swung out to his house, a new ranch style that was set about two hundred yards away from the other homes in the development, as if it didn't want to get contaminated. The woman in the Nash stayed a long, respectable block behind me.
Jeff's black Studebaker - the one that looked even more like a spaceship than the Edsel - sat basking in its own glory in the driveway. Cronin, like Dana and Dorothy, was raking leaves and putting them into bags that his wife, Jane, helped him with, a plump but sweet-faced woman. He had a couple of cast-iron deer in the front and an American flag flapping on a pole.
He stopped raking the moment he saw me pull into his drive. We weren't exactly friends. I saw him say something to his wife and wave her inside the house. The antichrist was coming.
I knew enough not to try and shake hands. He'd decline.
He was chunky but strong-looking, wearing the same black burr cut he'd had as a fishing-pole prairie kid. His gray sweatshirt was sweaty in the armpits. His jeans were baggy and faded.
"I'm not changing my mind," he said, "in case that's why you're here."
"Changing your mind about what?"
He looked surprised. "About Helen Toricelli. Howard Fast is on every list of communist sympathizers I've ever seen." He spat. "Communist sympathizers, my ass. They're communists and everybody knows it. But you have to be careful because they can sue you."
***
"She's a fine woman. She was raised in the Depression. She saw a lot of people starve. She doesn't want to see that again, so she looks around for ways to prevent it. She reads a lot of different things and shares her thoughts with her students. She's one of the best teachers I've ever known. And one of the nicest people, too."
"I'm going to surprise you here, Sam, and agree with you. About being a nice woman. She's salt of the earth. That's why this doesn't make me happy. I've talked to her a dozen times about not teaching some of the material she does, but she refuses to quit. As a school board member, what choice do I have? I've got to try and get rid of her for the sake of our kids."
Then he wagged his head toward the back yard. I followed him. In a side window I saw his wife, Jane, peeking out between the curtains, probably trying to figure out where we were headed.
The back yard was fenced off with white pickets. There was a swing set, an outdoor grill, and a wheelchair. In the wheelchair was a man - or what was left of a man, anyway. Lew Cronin had been a soldier in Korea. A lieutenant. He was captured and held for two years. The Koreans brainwashed him so severely there wasn't much left of him. Killing him would have been kinder. They sent him back after the war. After a proper interval, his wife divorced him and moved away, taking the kids. He probably wasn't even aware of it. He was usually in the psychiatric hospital. Sometimes, he stayed here with his brother. They had a place fixed up for him in the basement. He rarely spoke, just stared. Sat in his wheelchair and stared. I wondered if he knew how beautiful the day was. Or how sweet the breeze. Or how romantic the leaves burning near by.
"There's your communism for you."
I wanted to hate him but I couldn't. Would I have been any different if Lew had been my brother?
"The sonsabitches," he said. "Ten times a day, I want to get my hands on them."
"Helen Toricelli didn't have anything to do with this."
"No. But the people who wrote those books did."
Jane came to the back door. "Time to wash up for supper… Hi, Sam."
"Hi, Jane."
"Dorothy Conners probably won't believe this but she's in my prayers," Jane said. "I didn't care much for her boy, but I always liked Dana."
I wanted to hate her the way I wanted to hate him. Their hatred had made them fanatics. Then they'd shock you with their decent side.
"Thanks, Jane."
He said, "I'm sorry, Sam. I'm still going through with it."
He was looking toward the door. Supper, whatever it was, sure smelled good. "I'm told you were up in the pastureland the night Richard Conners came back home a couple weeks ago."
"Who the hell told you that?"
"Doesn't matter. It true?"
He was back to the unfriendly man I was familiar with. "Don't push me, McCain. I'm the wrong man to push. Believe me."
He didn't once turn around. Went to the back steps. Opened the back door. Went inside.
On the way back to my car, I slowed down so I could get a good look at the tread on the Studebaker tires.
***
I decided to make things simple for both of us.
I started to walk to my car, but then I passed it and ended up where she was parked in her nice blue Nash.
I went over to the driver's side. She was reading a copy of Time with Khrushchev's photo on it. She was one of those petite little women; everything about her was petite and delicate, from her earnest, smart, pretty face to her tiny wrists to the precise little knees that showed below the line of her black dress. She had a perky black hat on that set her blond hair off nicely.
"Hi," I said.
She looked up and smiled. She had baby teeth. Sweet and sexy. "Hi. Am I supposed to know you?"
"Gee, by now I'd think we're sort of old friends."
"We are?"
"Sure. You've been following me around all day. My dad even saw you watching me through binoculars."
"That is a great pickup line, you know? But then, being that you're so short and all, you probably need great pickup lines, don't you?"
The patter would've been more believable if her azure blue eyes hadn't been tinted red from recent tears. I wondered why she'd been crying.
I opened her door.
"I could always call a cop," she said.
"Believe me, you wouldn't want to call a cop in this town."
"Exactly why did you open my door?" she said, irritation in her voice now.
"Because we're going to go have a very civilized cup of coffee, and then you're going to tell me who the hell you are and why you're following me."
NINE
"I'm sorry I said you were short," she said, twenty minutes later, over coffee.
"I am short," I said.
"I know. But it hurt your feelings."
"No, it didn't."
"Sure it did. I could see it in your eyes. You have very expressive eyes."
I smiled.
"What's funny about having very expressive eyes?" she said.
"When I was in high school, I tried to train myself to get used to insults. I'd stand in front of the mirror and say, 'Your problem, McCain, is you're short. You're short, McCain, you hear that? Short!' I figured if I said it enough, the word would lose its effect on me."
"Did it work?"
"No. It still hurt my feelings and embarrassed me every time somebody said it." I smiled again. "I think my expressive eyes gave me away."
"They're nice eyes."
"So're yours."
"Thanks. They're probably my best feature."
"You're very pretty, too."
"Pretty, maybe. Very pretty, no. And lots of girls are pretty. So that isn't anything special."
We were in Al Monahan's Downtown Cafe. Al lost both his legs in Guam but that didn't stop him from running the best restaurant in town. Best meat loaf in the county, though men are careful never to say that to their wives or mothers. While Al has a staff, he does a lot of the work himself. He zips around in his wheelchair, usually with a pot of hot coffee for refills in his right hand.
"So," I said. "This is the part where you tell me who you are and why you're following me."
"I'd rather talk about you than me."
>
"I'm not very interesting."
"You work for an aristocratic judge. You have a private investigator's license but would rather practice law. The love of your life just ran off with the love of her life. There's a sweet girl who works down the street at Rexall named Mary who's in love with you. Your sister got pregnant and had to move to Chicago. You like to read paperback crime novels, Peter Rabe and John D. MacDonald especially, though lately you've been on a Harry Whittington kick."
"Harry Whittington? How in God's name did you find that out?"
"On the stand next to your bed. Five Harry Whittington Gold Medal books. I'd call that a kick, wouldn't you?"
"Then you broke into my apartment?"
She had a radiant smile. "Broke implies a certain lack of finesse. Let's just say I let myself in. Twice, in fact. One of the Whittingtons looked very interesting. Brute in Brass."
"It's probably his best book. Why didn't you just steal it?"
"I'm not a thief, Sam."
"Oh? Then what are you?"
She sipped coffee. I caught Al's eye and raised my cup. He whizzed over. Freshened up both our cups. "How'd you like the roast beef sandwich yesterday?" Al said to her.
"Best I ever had."
"This is a good one, Sam," he said, winking at me. "Pretty and smart."
"That's one thing I'll always like about your country," she said, when he'd gone. "The majority of people have the opportunity to better themselves no matter what has happened to them. He has a great little restaurant here."
I said, "My country. You're not from here?"
"Not originally, no."
"From where?"
"Good. You can't tell. That means my accent is entirely gone. Finally." Then, before I could ask another question, she said, "The only thing I don't like is all the violence. Even in a small town like this one. Two murders within twenty-four hours. Richard Conners and a man named - "
"Not a man," I said, my damaged pride suddenly raw again, "a jerk - a jerk named Rivers."
Now it was my turn to notice her expressive eyes and the way she winced when I called Rivers a jerk. Very simply, she said, "Rivers was my brother."
I knew now why she'd just finished crying when I'd first walked back to her car.
***
In 1934, the ever-paranoid Joseph Stalin was looking for a way to launch a purge. An idealistic young man in Leningrad named Sergei Kirov was developing a following that Stalin did not like. Unlike Stalin, whose only concern was staying in power, and who had murdered millions of Russians in order to do so, Kirov was a true man of the people. Stalin saw Kirov and people like him as a threat. So he devised an idea that would take care of Kirov and his growing number of followers. He employed an assassin named Leonid Nikolaev to murder Kirov. In turn, Nikolaev was killed by Stalin, who then announced that the country needed to be purged of all of Nikolaev's subversive cohorts. He did this in the guise of praising Kirov, even going so far as to erect a statue to him in Moscow. He used this pretext to launch what became known in Russian history as the Time of Great Terror, to purge the country of all those who disagreed with him. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Near Karelia alone - a picturesque republic in northwest Russia - more than nine thousand bodies of political prisoners were later discovered.
To be associated in any way with the assassin Nikolaev meant eventual death. To be related to him meant swift death. Karl Rivers and his sister Natalie had come to the United States as small children in 1937, she said. Their father and mother had smuggled them to freedom. But even before they could leave the Soviet Union, they saw their mother shot by a secret police officer and their father shipped off to a notorious gulag on the Moscow-Volga canal that would be a monument to both engineering and tyranny. They never heard from their father again.
Brother and sister grew up in New York City. In-laws raised them to be - understandably - anti-Stalinist, anticommunist. Natalie absorbed these sentiments without becoming fanatical about them. Her brother became psychotic (her word) about the Bolshevik empire. He enlisted to serve in the Korean War, risking his life many times, earning many ribbons and citations for bravery, including the Distinguished Service Cross. He went into the FBI, where he became, according to J. Edgar himself, the "ideal" agent. Then, two years ago, he became involved with a group called America First. Many wealthy and influential men were said to have established this organization, though none would publicly lend his name to it. The group's goal was simple: to "purge" (a familiar word) local communities of communists and communist sympathizers (comsymps).
They concentrated on city halls, school boards and libraries. They boasted that more than a thousand public servants had been turned out of their positions in the first eight months alone. They worked both openly (in citizen groups who showed up at council and school board meetings to denounce suspect officials) and covertly (with pamphlets that frequently cited Jewish, Catholic, and civil rights organizations as communist fronts). A little over a year ago, Richard Conners had denounced the group by name on a CBS radio interview. The group had made him its number-one target.
***
"What was your brother doing out here?"
"I don't know. We hadn't spoken in months."
"Why not?"
"He has - had - a wife and two sweet little girls. He got so involved in America First that he virtually deserted them. I took their side in the matter. He resented it, said I was disloyal, said that as a Russian immigrant I should understand how important his work was."
"You didn't approve of what he was doing?"
"I always put it this way. I'm sure there are Russian spies in the highest positions in Washington. And Russian spies all around the country. And they must be identified and dealt with. But all this hysteria - Joe McCarthy and groups like America First - they're doing exactly what the Russians want: turning people against each other, creating distrust everywhere. I'm all for an orderly, honest investigation to expose the Russian spies in this country. But - "
"I can see where you might've had some disagreements with your brother."
"I truly believe that by the end he was mentally ill."
"I'm sorry I called him a jerk."
"I'm afraid that's exactly what he be-came."
"And now you're out here to - "
"Find out why he was killed. And who killed him."
"The police chief seems to think maybe I did it."
"Your police chief is an idiot."
"You noticed?"
"My brother went to your apartment looking for something. Somebody followed him there and killed him."
"That's the way I see it, too."
"I want to help you, Sam. I owe it to my brother. I loved him. Well, I hated him and I loved him. That's the worst feeling in the world."
"Yeah, I think it is."
"I can help you. I know how America First operates. And I have some idea of what he might have been doing out here."
"Yeah? What?"
"This is just speculation. You asked me before why he was here and I said I didn't know. And I don't. Not for sure. But I do know what he did in the past. And that was to get people to confess that they were secretly communists."
"How did he do that?"
"The America First people used him for two reasons. First, because he was great window dressing, a former FBI agent who'd also lived under communist oppression."
"And second?"
"Because he was an expert at torture. He'd studied the methods of the KGB. He became just like the people he hated."
TEN
We stopped by my apartment on the way to the motel where Rivers had been staying. Mrs. Goldman had been nice enough to spend the day cleaning. She left a note saying she'd appreciate it if I'd help her rake leaves next week. Two windows were half open and there was a nice breeze.
Natalie sat on the couch. The cats liked her, Tash on her lap, Crystal and Tess on either side, all well within stroking distance.
"This is a nice place
," Natalie said. "Cozy."
"You wouldn't have said that this morning."
"I wonder if they found anything."
"I didn't have anything to find."
"They obviously think you did. Maybe something that Conners gave you."
"He didn't give me anything."
"Maybe he dropped it off and you didn't know about it. Or maybe he put it in the mail and it hasn't arrived yet."
In the john, I changed out of my suit into desert boots, chinos, a crew-neck blue sweater, and a brown leather aviation-style jacket.
"You look cute," she said.
"So do you."
"You don't always have to compliment me when I compliment you."
"Compliment me some more and I'll see if I can remember that."
She helped me fill up the cat bowls. The kitty sand she allowed me to do solo.
***
Econo-Miles was located on the way to Iowa City. It was one of those postwar prefabs that started to disintegrate the day it opened for business. Roof, walls, walks all showed signs of hurried patchwork repairs. Several of the cars parked in front of the rooms had fins like sharks. They'd be needing hurried patchwork repairs soon, too. I'd take my Ford any day over those Detroit nightmares.
The woman behind the registration desk was watching a TV news break. A senator was saying that he had strong suspicions that Fidel Castro wasn't a friend of democracy after all but a full-blown communist. The woman took a long drag on her Kool filter tip and frowned. Her name was Esther Haley. She was one of those worn but somehow ageless women - born age fifty-two - and hadn't changed her hairstyle, her makeup (Jean Harlow plucked eyebrows), or put-upon frown since then. She looked at Natalie and then at me and said, "C'mon, McCain, you know this ain't no hot-sheet place."
