by John Gardner
Louis told her not to be long about it. Then, making sure she was safely in the small stockroom, he began to enter the amounts in the ledger: placing one pile of money in the canvas bag he would take home to his father, while the twenty-five dollars in crisp notes were left to one side, ready for his pocket.
He completed the task, and had just slipped the notes into his jacket when he turned to see Ruth standing in the stockroom door.
“I’m finished now, Mr. Louis.” She stood about three paces from him, smiling her sugar-icing smile. “Looks like you’ve done your own bit of business as well. Your papa know that you take your wages straight out of the till?”
Louis automatically turned on his smile. “Ruth, Ruth,” he shook his head. “You think I would steal from my father?”
She did not bat an eyelid. “I guess you would, Louis. You’re quite a man and, if you’ll pardon me saying so, your papa’s a shade stingy. I wouldn’t blame you if you had sticky fingers.”
“And if that was the case—if, mind you—I suppose you wouldn’t think of telling my pa?”
She came towards him. “That depends, Lou.” She was within touching distance.
Carefully, Louis took the wad from his pocket and peeled off two dollar bills. Swiftly, her hand came out, pushing the money away.
“You don’t want it?”
“Maybe. But not that way.”
“How, then?” The back of his throat had gone dry, while the familiar beat had come into his loins.
“A little night out, maybe. A visit to the theater. Sally is still running at the New Amsterdam and I’m told it’s a real good show. Then, afterwards, we could have a little supper, and … well, who knows.”
He did not even have to think about it. He said he would get the tickets tomorrow—“In my lunch break, I’ll go right down and fix it. If that’s really what you want.”
She cocked her head on one side. “Hadn’t you better come and check I done everything right in the storeroom, Mr. Louis?” It seemed to be an open invitation. Yes, he said. Yes, he had better come and check.
The street door was locked and, as they got into the dimly lit stockroom, the girl quietly closed the door behind her.
“You’ll really take me to see Sally, and out to supper at some swell joint later?” She was standing very close to him.
“Sure I will, Ruth.” His arms slid around her tiny waist. “Why not?” He could feel her flesh under his hands.
“That would be really great. …”
He did not let her finish, drawing her to him; feeling her arms slide around his neck and her mouth close on his, lips open, tongue jabbing down his throat. She pushed herself against him, and he knew she must be aware of his hardness through her skirt.
“I tell you, Herbie, this was like one of those stories they have for women. What they call them?”
“Body rippers?”
“No. Bodice rippers, Herb. If I describe what happened, it would be like one of those bodice rippers.”
“Do you have to?”
“If you don’t mind. I like to think about it once in a while. It’s all I can do, now. Think about it.”
She went wild, kissing him back, pulling him down among the shoeboxes on the floor, her tongue working like the piston on a railroad engine. He felt for her breasts, but they seemed to be encased in some kind of starchy plating, so he let his hand drift down to her knee, pulling her dress up so that he could feel her stockings above the knee. There, he found, she had not yet discovered the convenience of short drawers. She still wore the old-fashioned, longer bloomers, rucked and lacy in the leg, and against her thigh, so that he could not get his hand inside and had to be satisfied with the feel of her through the cotton.
At the same moment, her hand fell upon his crotch, gripping and rubbing, driving him on.
“Let’s get these damned things off,” he croaked, and broke the spell, for she pulled away from him.
“Oh, Louis! Oh! No! No, we mustn’t. Not yet. Not yet, my dear Louis.” She straightened her skirt, and began to tidy her hair. He saw that her cheeks were scarlet.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s too fast for me. We have to get to know one another.” Suddenly she whirled around. “This is so. forward of me, but I love you, Louis. I love you so much.”
“Of course,” the old Maestro said, now in the present, “her timing was perfect. I had been playing around with little Melodie in Harlem, but here was a good, white Jewish girl. I wanted her like a dipso wants a drink, or a starving man needs food. I think at that moment I’d have promised her anything in the world, I’d have cut off my cock for one time with her. But I knew I could have her if I dipped into some of my capital and played a waiting game. Boy, that Ruth was something. Anyway …”
The telephone rang. Six. A count of ten. Then it began to ring again and Herbie picked up listening for Naldo’s voice.
But it was not Naldo Railton at the distant end.
“Pauline Cummings, for Mr. Buckerbee,” Pucky Curtiss said, from her room at The Boar’s Head Inn.
(14)
OLD SPIES OFTEN BECOME TERMINAL cases to their tradecraft. After living many lives within one mind and body, suspicion becomes enshrined within the person. Well into retirement, men who have spent years in the field will still automatically take precautions which, in normal life, are fussy and unnecessary. Some will continue to use old tradecraft, built up like the layers of an onion, so that it becomes habitual, and dangerous in the real world which is free of such fictions. There is also a further problem: the heightened intuition, fine-tuned by constant apprehension.
Naldo Railton had, until Big Herbie returned to his life, managed to adjust. Living several miles south of Charlottesville, in a loosely shackled community called Esmont, his house was screened by trees on the road frontage and around the sides. The rear looked out on open country, reaching far off to the panorama of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
His nearest neighbors were half a mile away, on either side of the property, their homes only visible in the winter when the trees were bare. Until now, the watch on his home had been in plain sight, the local police unconcerned at keeping a car or van just off the road, and visible to their subject. Fall had yet to turn the trees and set them on fire, with golds and reds and yellows. Fall is Virginia’s most beautiful season.
The car was gone when Naldo looked out first thing in the morning. He thought nothing of it until he walked onto the deck which ran around the rear of the house. Only then did his intuitive senses begin to pick up the old vibes. He knew he was being watched, and common sense told him they probably had high-powered directional mikes aimed at the house, from at least two hiding places.
He could see nobody, but all the arcane experience he had soaked up in World War II and the long deep freeze of the Cold War came rushing into his mind and body. He scribbled a note to Barbara, putting it on the table in front of her when she came downstairs. He had never wanted any of this to happen again. He had left both the Secret Intelligence Service and his country a bitter man, weighed down with the folly that had become the norm in Europe. Now the folly was here again.
After breakfast, they both went out onto the deck. It was a warm morning, almost a summer heat, with no breeze. Hard to imagine that in a month or two the leaves would be shredded from the trees.
The previous morning’s mail had brought his copy of the British magazine The Gramophone, so he called a record store to ask if they had a new recording of the Scriabin piano concerto, picked almost at random from the advertisements. They had, and he asked them to hold it for him. “I’ll be over in an hour or so,” he told the cheerful man on the line, knowing that the watchers and listeners would be ready for him.
They were very good, which made him think they had probably been brought from Washington: almost certainly FBI Counter Intelligence people with the necessary equipment. He picked them up on the outskirts of the city, a beige, nondescript car with an extra aerial and two men up front. The
y stayed back, two cars behind him, so, to be certain, Naldo turned off the main drag and did a long loop that would eventually bring him out on 29 North.
They were not there for the entire loop but, when he finally got back onto 29, the beige car appeared again, as if by magic. But Naldo knew it was no illusionist’s trick. The detour could have only taken him to the point where they waited. For a minute or so he wondered if they had planted a homer and he made a mental note to check the car out in the garage back home.
He got onto 29 South, pulled off at the Seminole Square Mall, and collected his CD. As he drove home, the car disappeared but, two cars behind, he picked up a battered van. This one had two antennae, one of them high and whipping around in the slipstream, a man and woman up front. Funny, he thought, across the miles, in the old U.S.S.R. they were dismantling communism, tearing down the statues of Lenin and yesterday’s men, hiding the icons of the past as though this would somehow alter what had been. While here, in free and lovely Virginia, men and women moved through clandestine routines because of an old man, almost the age of the century itself.
It was time to cash it in, Naldo decided. He had done his time. The Curtiss girl was in town. Let her take over. After all, nobody knew she was there; her phone, like the one at Herbie’s makeshift safe house, would be untapped. She also had a car which the Feds would never suspect.
He wrote her a quick note in spook speak, giving her everything she would need, addressed it to Ms. Pauline Cummings at The Boar’s Head Inn, and told Barb that they should treat themselves to lunch out. “Maybe you can buy yourself a dress or something as well.”
It was the van that followed them this time. Naldo had been careful not to mention where they were going, so that no stakeout would be in place. The trick would be to get the envelope across the reception desk and safely into Pucky’s pigeonhole, before anyone followed them inside, as he was certain they would.
He dropped Barbara, with the note, at the main door, then went off and parked the car. As he locked it, he saw the couple from the van loitering, taking their time getting out of the vehicle. He suspected they had possibly called for backup, which was just the way they played it.
Barbara ran a finger lazily tracing the line of her jaw as they waited for the menu: her body language said that she had made the drop at reception, and they settled down to a pleasant meal, conscious that the FBI couple were only three tables away, having placed themselves strategically so that they could view all entrances, exits and the Railtons’ table.
When Naldo and Barbara left, almost two hours later, the couple did not move, and Barbara glanced towards the row of boxes and keys behind reception. The note had gone, and there was a different girl on duty. Safe, clear and home, except for the beige car which had once more taken over.
Back at the Boar’s Head, Pucky read Naldo’s letter three times, committed everything to memory, and waited until just before dinner to go through the coded ringing sequence to get Herbie.
“Pauline Cummings, for Mr. Buckerbee,” she said into the silent telephone.
“You got Buckerbee.” She knew Herbie’s voice because they had played a couple of old tapes to her in London.
“Your friend, D Major. He’s out of it.” Naldo had directed her to use something that only Herbie would remember. Just after World War II, they had both been part of an ultrasecure operation dubbed Symphony. Naldo’s crypto then had been D Major and he felt that both Symphony and his old code name, though just about as insecure as you could get in the present circumstances, would do the trick. Herbie would listen.
Herbie listened.
“He has the dogs on him. I need to see you. I know all the tradecraft, and he’s spelled out exactly where you are. I’m coming over tonight.”
“No,” Herbie spoke very quietly. “How much field work you done?”
“Enough.”
“There’s never enough. You sure the line’s safe?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Okay, we’ll soon know if it is loused up. Meantime, what you do is run the back doubles tomorrow. All day.”
“Back doubles?” Pucky, for once in her life, was lost.
“Shit. You not done enough in the field. Me, I’m unhappy about you, but you’re all I got. Okay, back doubles is avoidance and surveillance check. You dance through all the local roads. You double back—is probably why it’s called back doubles, but I don’t think so. You watch for cars, antennae, or vans. Then on foot you watch for same people. Look at shoes. If my friend’s gone cold, it means they’ve a good team he cannot throw. This also means probably a fair number of people involving …”
“Involving?”
“Involved, what’s the difference? Watch hands, watch shoes. Teams don’t have time to change shoes. Christ, you can read that in John le Carré. Is elementary, my dear Watson. Call me again, same time tomorrow. Same procedure. If you’re clean, and only if you’re clean, I’ll see you, okay?”
“I want to see you tonight.”
“Use your French stick, girl. …”
“French … ?” They had told her about Kruger’s word games, and she guessed, in time, that he meant loaf of bread—head.
“You’re not safe on the streets yet, so I can’t risk you exploding this place. Start checking now. Okay?”
“You’re sure?”
“Seven hundred percent sure, old sheep. Go to.”
Pucky sighed. She did not like any of it. Reluctantly she replied, “Very well.”
“Good.” Herbie then cryptically added, “The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch the constipation of the king. ’Bye.”
The line closed.
“Problems, you got?” Passau seemed relaxed, but Herbie thought he detected a nervousness in the eyes. He was also flushed from talking about the long ago abortive moment in the stockroom with the nubile Ruth.
“No.” Herbie looked at him and smiled. “No, I haven’t a problem, Lou. We’ve got a problem. Possibly. Don’t know yet. I’ll let you into the secret if things get tricky. You want to tell me more about Ruth before we break for dinner?”
“Why not?” He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, as though savoring the memory. “Oh boy, she was some cookie that Ruth. Never gave up. And I was such a dumb kid, Herb. So dumb you’d never believe.”
“Tell me about it.”
The day following the fumble in the stockroom, Packensteiner made plans for the outing. He got tickets to Sally for the following Wednesday and was excited almost every waking hour. He was sure he would get his way after the show and a good supper. As they left the store that night, Ruth whispered to him—“After we’ve eaten, shall we come back here for a while?”
Again he was disappointed. The passion was intense, and he even managed to drag her drawers down to her ankles, while she got her hand in through his fly.
Then it all went down as before—Ruth pulling away, and saying, “No, Lou! Not yet!”
They would have to wait, she told him. Just for a little longer. She was a virgin and had always promised she would save herself for the right man, and then only in the marriage bed.
“This girl almost drove me crazy, Herb. I wanted the bitch so much that I couldn’t even see straight. My God, I took her out, used all my savings that I’d stolen from my father. I even put off my final date for leaving because of the bitch. Lord, I nearly offered to marry her, but at least I had the sense to keep that option at bay. She would’ve done me properly if I’d offered. As it was she almost did for me. Jesu, what a terrible thing it is to be a satyr.”
“Lou, with your reputation, you could be classed as one of the Satyr Day Saints.” Herbie thought this very funny, but Passau showed not even the flicker of a smile.
It went on for months. September 1922 came, his birthday; still Ruth did not give in. He saw her regularly and, eventually, realized what she was truly after, for no woman, he considered, could ever hold out against him this long unless she had an ulterior motive.
/> It was now October. He would have to make one big killing from the store, then show Ruth that he meant business. After that? Who knew?
He was concerned about the money he had already stolen and knew it could not go on forever. This year, he thought, echoing it to Aaron Hamovitch, “This year I’m going for sure.”
“You said September, originally, Louis.” The big man shook his unruly head of hair so that it made a moving halo around him. “You go on like this, and you’ll never leave.”
Louis’ main worry now slid from the chase after Ruth’s virginity to the concern of money. Already, if his father was to make a thorough examination, he could prove nearly two hundred dollars had been purloined.
Then, in November, the opportunity came to make one large, quick killing. A wealthy woman, the wife of the banker who had made Joseph the original loan for the business, came into the store with her three children. The total order was in the region of three hundred dollars.
Louis presented the order to the workshop—which meant, in effect, to his father—as three entirely separate transactions, carefully making them out to people he knew were slow at settling their accounts. Mrs. Meyerberg, the banker’s wife, settled promptly, on the nail, and on the first of the month.
On that first day of December, Louis’ eyes seldom strayed from the shop door—anxious lest he either miss Mrs. Meyerberg or, worse, if his father came in unexpectedly while she was there to settle her account.
The banker’s wife came in just before lunch. She was a fussy dumpling of a woman who paid all her accounts by check, in person, as though this brought about a great saving in mailing costs. Louis greeted her with his usual show of charm.
As she was about to write her check, she asked if she had the correct amount, “Three hundred dollars?”
“Three hundred dollars exactly, ma’am.” Louis paused. Then—“Mrs. Meyerberg, I wonder if you could possibly make this check out to cash. Payable to the bearer. We have a number of tradespeople coming in today—suppliers’ representatives, you will understand. It’s always easier for us to pay them in cash.”
