by Joseph Kanon
“Well, at least this one’s not a Russian,” Nick said.
“We can’t stay here. Two white people sitting in a car.”
“No, let’s just get a look at the house. We’ll swing back.”
“As if no one will notice.”
But they were lucky. The house was in better repair than its neighbors, trim, a neat front yard, and on their third pass a man in uniform came out, moved a tricycle to the end of the porch, and, taking out his keys, walked toward a new car parked in front. Nick turned at the corner and waited.
“Let’s see where he goes.”
“Have you ever followed anybody?” she said, her voice eager, enjoying it.
“I’m learning on the job.”
It turned out to be harder than he expected. He waited a few minutes after the car passed, then rounded the corner to find it idling at a red light.
“Don’t slow down. He’ll notice,” Molly said.
Green. Their luck held. Another block and a car came out of a driveway and put itself between them. Nick relaxed. More blocks. The new car moved smoothly, never running lights, as orderly and correct as its owner.
“But where’s he going?” Nick said. “There’s nothing this way. Why doesn’t he go into town?”
They followed for ten more minutes, unhurried, and then Nick saw the wires and gates, the sentry checking passes. The black man held out an ID badge and was waved through. The sentry looked up at Nick, who turned away, pretending to be lost.
“What is it?” Molly said.
“Anacostia. The naval base. I forgot it was down here. Well, that fits, doesn’t it? A little Red dot on the sonar screen.”
They drove up around the Jefferson Monument, then out through the park along the river and over the bridge. The fourth address was in Alexandria, not the Old Town of cobbled streets and ice cream shops but the maze of streets behind, lined with two-family houses. Anywhere.
“They’re certainly not doing it for the money,” Molly said, scanning the street.
“No. A better world.”
“1017. Next to the one on the end.”
They found a space two houses down and parked, then sat and had a cigarette. Another quiet street, a few children coming home from school.
Molly looked at her watch. “I’ll bet there’s no one home. Not at this hour. They must all do something, work somewhere. Otherwise, what good would they be?”
“I forgot to ask where the Russian girl worked.”
“We’ll find out. It’s only the beginning, you know. It’s not going to happen overnight.”
“It’s not going to happen here at all,” Nick said, putting the key in. “You’re right. We’ll come back in the morning.”
“Wait. Let’s find out who he is, anyway. Be right back.”
She got out, walked over to the house, and rang the doorbell. What would she say if someone answered? She rang again, then looked around once and put her hand into the mailbox, pulling out a few pieces and shuffling through them. It took a second.
“Ruth Silberstein. Miss,” she said in the car.
“Silverstein?”
“Ber.”
He drove past the house. “We’ll come back.”
“She gets the New Republic, if that means anything. Where’s the last one?”
He looked at the list. “Chevy Chase.”
“God, they’re all over the place. Creepy, isn’t it? No one has the faintest idea. You can walk right up and look at their mail. They could be anywhere.”
“Undermining our way of life,” he said, using a newsreel voice.
“Well, they are, aren’t they?”
“We don’t know what they’re doing, Molly. Maybe they’re just passing on the wheat crop estimates so somebody can make a good deal. Do you think Rosemary was undermining our way of life?”
Molly looked out the window, quiet. “Just her own, I guess.”
“Maybe they’re just small fry.”
“Your father didn’t think so.”
“No.” Names he was willing to sell, worth a life.
“What are you going to do after? With the list.”
“I don’t know,” he said, a curve, unexpected. “I’m only interested in one.”
“I mean, they’re agents.”
“So was my father.”
“But they might be-”
“I don’t know, Molly. What do you want me to do, turn them in to the committee? I can’t. It would be like turning my father in. Besides, there isn’t any committee anymore. It’s over. Just cops. Let Jeff catch them. I don’t take sides.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Not anymore. Not with this.”
“So Ruth Silberstein just keeps getting her New Republics and doing whatever she’s doing.”
“I guess that depends on what she’s doing.”
“So you’ll decide,” she said quietly. “You’ll be the committee.”
A pinprick, sharp. “Yes, I’ll be the committee,” he said, the sound of the words strange, as if even his voice had turned upside down. “What’s the address?”
The house in Chevy Chase was a snug Cape Cod with shutters and a fussy herbaceous border running along the front. In December there would be a wreath on the door and candles in the window, a Christmas card house. The wide glossy lawn was set off on either end by tall hedges to separate it from the neighbors, modern ranch houses, one with a For Sale shingle stuck in the grass. There was no car in the driveway or other sign of life.
“You going to read his mail too?” Nick said.
“No, it’s a slot,” Molly said, having already looked. “They’re showing the house next door.”
“How do you know?”
“See, they’re huddling, and he keeps looking at the roof. The one in the suit’s the real estate lady. You can always tell. She’s wearing flats. With a suit. They all do that. I guess it’s hard on the feet.”
Nick grinned at her. “Are you kidding me, or do you really know all this?”
“Everybody knows that,” she said, pleased with herself. “You just never notice things.” She turned back to the window and watched the scene on the lawn, another pantomime of gestures and nodding heads. “How’d you like to live in the suburbs?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah,” she said, still looking out, “but when you see the right house.” She opened the door, then closed it behind her and stuck her head through the window. “Maybe you’d better stay here. You look like somebody from Immigration.”
He watched her dart across the street and up to the group on the lawn, disengaging the woman wearing flats, a nod toward the hedge, heads together, the couple left to the side, unmoored. A shake of hands, the woman rummaging in her purse for a card, a smile and a wave, every step light and sure. When she crossed the street she seemed to move like liquid, and he thought of her coming toward him at the Bruces’ party, walking into his life, like the songs. Now she was grinning.
“What did I tell you? They’re the CIA of the suburbs. Everything. His name’s Brown, John Brown. Like an alias, but then who’d use that? The house isn’t for sale-she’s tried. They won’t list it. But there are a few others I might like to see, just like it. He’s not married, by the way-he lives with his mother. Which is odd, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Where he works.”
He raised his eyes, waiting.
“How much do you love me?”
“Where?”
She grinned. “The Justice Department.”
“Bingo.”
They couldn’t sit there and wait, however, under the watchful realtor’s eye, so they drove into the next street, then the next, driving finally because they couldn’t stop, just being in motion a substitute for something real to do. Brown wouldn’t leave his office until five, later if he was the diligent type, so they had the rest of the afternoon to kill. Like a homing pigeon, Nick found himself drawn back to Washington, trying to make the streets fa
miliar again.
“We still don’t know who the Russian is,” Molly said as they passed Embassy Row again.
“It doesn’t matter. He’d never use a contact from the embassy. They’re probably watched as a matter of routine. He’d never risk that.”
“So then there were four.”
“Unless Brown makes one.”
It was when they were passing the bland new buildings on K Street, glass boxes of lawyers and lobbyists, that he saw the sign and pulled up.
“United Charities Building,” Molly said. “It’s just an idea.” He pointed to the NO PARKING sign. “Move the car if someone comes. Five minutes.”
He was directed to the Events Office and a pretty blond girl who looked too young to have been alive the night of the ball. A Southern voice and perfect teeth. The office seemed a mystery to her, and Nick wondered whether she was paid or just a nice girl taking a semester off from Sweet Briar, doing good works for credit. She treated him like a prospective date from VMI, all smiles and helplessness.
“A social history? Do they know about it?”
“Not of United Charities, of Washington. Washington society.”
“Oh,” she said, interested now. “You want to know about the ball.”
“I thought you might keep the guest lists. To update them every year. Is there a file like that?”
“Well, I don’t know. I tell you what, you wait right here. I’ll ask Connie. She’ll know.” Another smile. “Nineteen-fifty? Just nineteen-fifty?” Unaware that anything had happened then; a date from the archives.
When she returned, holding a few pieces of paper, she seemed surprised that they existed at all. Nick glanced at the long row of typed names.“That’s it,” he said, nodding.
“Would you like a copy? I can use the machine,” she said, walking over to the copier.
Nick looked at the names as the sheets came out of the machine. On page two, Mr and Mrs Walter Kotlar. He saw his mother dressing, her off-the-shoulder gown.
“I don’t suppose they keep a list of who actually attended. You know, who showed and who didn’t show. One with check marks or something.”
“Check marks? No, this is all there was. You know, most everybody does show. It’s our big event. I was there this year-you know, to help out?”
“I hope they let you dance. They should.”
“Well, aren’t you nice?”
Back in the car, he flipped through the list again. “I wonder how many are dead,” he said.
“I still don’t see what you’re going to do with it,” Molly said.
“Did you see at the Mayflower how easy it would have been? You could go from the ballroom to the elevators without even passing the desk. Two exits, in fact. No one would know.”
“You could also just walk through the front door. Who’d notice, unless you were a bum?”
He glanced down. “The Honorable Kenneth B. Welles,” he said.
She looked at him. “Come on. John Brown’s body lies amolderin‘.”
There was traffic, and Brown’s car was already in the driveway by the time they got there. They sat for an hour, watching the house lights come on in the late spring dusk, occasional shadows moving back and forth behind the sheer curtains. The carriage lamp by the front door was on, as if they were expecting visitors. A dark corner, suddenly visible through the window, curtains open.
“The dining room,” Molly said, watching. “Look, a cozy dinner with Mom.” Brown sat at the table, his back to them.
Afterward the woman cleared, then passed out of sight. A light came on at the other side of the house; the dining room light was switched off. More waiting. Then they saw the blue-white light of a television in one of the upstairs windows.
“Let’s go,” Molly said. “They’re here for the night.”
“Give it an hour. Let’s see if anyone comes. The front light’s still on.”
But it was Brown who stepped into it, a middle-aged man with glasses, disappointingly nondescript, more clerk than G-man. He crossed to the driveway quickly and got into the car. A few seconds later, the glowing red taillights backed out into the street.
“Look alive,” Nick said, waiting until Brown’s car had turned the corner before he started his own.
They drove through quiet suburban streets, then finally into the busy broad sweep of Wisconsin Avenue.
“He’s going back to town,” Molly said. “Meeting somebody?”
“Maybe he’s just going back to work, now that Mom’s tucked in.”
They stayed several lengths behind, almost losing him once in the confusion of a traffic circle, but he swung onto Massachusetts and they found him again and followed, unhurried, all the way into town.
The left turn came out of nowhere, without a turn signal, and Nick missed it. He doubled back, making a u-turn in front of an annoyed taxi. Brown’s taillights were at the end of the block, turning right. At the next corner he took a right again, heading back to the avenue.
“He knows,” Molly said. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t think so. He’s not trying to lose us.”
“No, to catch us, see if we’re here. Look, there he goes again.”
Another diversion, then back into the light traffic.
“Maybe it’s standard procedure. To make sure nobody’s following.”
“Before a meeting? I always thought they met on park benches.”
They drove past the White House, where Nixon was plotting the peace, then down around the Willard and back up 13th Street. The old downtown was deserted now, abandoned to drunks. Brown stopped at an intersection just down from New York Avenue and pulled over.
“He’s parking,” Molly said. “Well, it’s not a bench.”
The storefront was outlined with a marquee of flashing light bulbs, its papered-over windows shouting XXX-RATED. MAGAZINES. NOVELTIES. PEEPS 25c. Brown walked over, looking around furtively, and went in. A few minutes passed.
“The one place nobody looks at you,” Nick said.
“They don’t?”
“Stay here. I want to see who he meets.” Nick crossed over to the store but turned to the window, startled, when the door opened again. Brown. He glanced toward Nick, then, unconcerned, walked back to his car, a bag under his arm.
Keeping his head down, Nick pushed into the store, dazzled by the harsh fluorescent glare. Racks and racks of magazines, a riot of breasts and pink skin, but no one looking at them. In the back, a dimly lit room of cubicles for the film loops. The place was deserted. At the cash register, enormous plastic dildoes hanging behind, a kid in a T-shirt with shoulder-length hair pulled into a ponytail looked bored, or stoned.
“That guy who was just in here,” Nick said. “He talk to anybody?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Back there,” Nick said, nodding at the cubicles. “He go back there?”
“Fuck you.”
Nick glared at him, a cop’s look. “You want me to close you down?”
“Hey, man, I just work here. You see anybody back there? It’s slow, you know what I mean? He bought a magazine, that’s all. You want to buy one?” The kid reached under the register and picked up a baseball bat. “Then get the fuck out. You’re not fuzz. I know fuzz.”
“You sure?” He saw the kid hesitate, but let it go and turned to the door. His hand on the knob. “What’d he buy?”
“A lez mag. So he likes lez. What the fuck.”
“Thanks,” Nick said, leaving.
“Yeah, peace. Hey, close the fucking door.” Brown’s car was still there as Nick crossed the street. “He’s just sitting there,” Molly said. “What do you think he’s doing?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said, disappointed. “Beating off. He likes lesbians.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“We’re wasting our time. He wasn’t shaking a tail, he just wanted to be sure no one saw him buying dirty magazines.”
“There he goes. Let’s make sure.”
/>
But the trip back to Chevy Chase was uneventful, no diversions, and when he went back into his house the carriage lamp went off.
“Now they can both settle in for the night,” Nick said. “I wonder if he locks his door.” He turned to Molly. This isn’t working.“
“Yes, it is. It just takes time. They’re spies. We know that. Sooner or later-”
“But how much later?”
“Let’s get another car. That way at least we can cover two of them at once.” She glanced at him. “Unless you don’t think I can do it.”
He smiled. “I think you can do anything. All right, I’ll start with Ruth. You take the Russian girl.”
“I thought you said he wouldn’t use a Russian.”
“Not at the embassy. Let’s see where she works.”
He was in Alexandria at dawn, but not up before Ruth Silberstein. A small light on upstairs, presumably the bathroom. He sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup, prepared this time for a stakeout.
Twenty minutes later she was out of the house. Nick leaned forward and looked closely. Probably in her forties, carefully made up, dark hair teased into a kind of beehive helmet, like the Johnson daughters‘, a belted raincoat even though the morning was already warm. High heels and a black purse, the car keys ready in her hand, everything in its place. Even her walk was efficient, like the professional secretary she probably was. She got into a Volkswagen and ran the motor a few minutes before she pulled away. Ruth Silberstein, who are you? What do you do?
She took the direct route to the parkway, driving fast, breaking lanes. The river, shiny with sun, flew past the window. Nick got into the lane for the bridge, anticipating her, but she turned over to the Virginia side and he was forced to dodge cars to get back. Toward the cemetery. He stared at the little car, keeping her in sight, ignoring signs.
When she pulled off into a side road he had no idea where he was until he saw the vast parking lot, acres of it ringing the five-sided building. Well, the Pentagon, yes. Early, to get a space near the building, to minimize the distance in high heels. Or maybe her boss liked to start early, whoever he was, who probably thought the world of Miss Silberstein, because she knew where everything was. Nick watched her walk into the building, ready for whatever paperwork came her way, running two copies, to be on the safe side.