by Greg Herren
“Buy you another?” the young man said with a thick accent, inching closer so that his knee was touching Max’s.
Max felt the rush he always got when another man would approach him, hinting at desire and excitement and furtive fumbling in the dark to come. He nodded and turned his head slightly, seeing the young man’s face in profile, recognizing him in that moment with an even bigger thrill.
Aleksander Smorodnikov’s defection from the Soviet Union had been big news a year or so earlier. He’d been with a lesser Russian ballet company—not the Bolshoi—but one that had been allowed out from behind the Iron Curtain to make a tour of the US, as tensions grew over Berlin. Aleks had been the principal male dancer. He’d somehow managed to escape from his heavy guard and ran to a nearby police station, begging for political asylum. Someone else Max knew at State had dealt with the resultant mess, and eventually Smorodnikov was granted asylum and landed a gig with the Washington Ballet, eventually fading from the headlines. Max wasn’t a fan of the ballet but had been curious about the handsome Russian whose face had been on the front page of the papers for those troubling weeks, and so he took Bitsy to see a performance of Don Quixote. Smorodnikov’s body, in the skintight flesh-colored tights, was magnificent and he couldn’t stop staring, even after Bitsy had noticed and pinched his thigh so hard he’d winced.
Max couldn’t believe his luck that night in the bar, even as Aleks led him back to an apartment, which was actually only a short walk, maybe three blocks, from the town house Max called home.
That was how it started, that evening—and with Aleks living so close by, the affair was so incredibly easy to continue…even after Bitsy and the kids came home from New Orleans.
All he needed to say was he was talking a walk, going for cigarettes, anything.
It never occurred to him that maybe it was too easy until the day Agent Frank Clinton showed up at his front door.
The timing was, again, almost perfect. Once again Bitsy and the kids were in New Orleans, this time for the Christmas holidays; as soon as the older kids were released from school Bitsy was in a taxi with them on the way to the train station. She hated DC but would never admit it and was happiest back in New Orleans, surrounded by the vapid girls she’d gone to McGehee with and her equally empty-headed family. He would follow later, of course, but was looking forward to the two weeks of freedom from them, free to pretend he’d never married his wife or had children, free to spend his evenings in bed with Aleks.
Bitsy had left for the train station not an hour earlier. He was enjoying a Scotch and the blissful silence of the empty house, just waiting for Aleks to get home from his rehearsal and call, when he answered the knock on the front door.
A fortyish man in a gray trench coat, a felt fedora pulled down low over his forehead, with small beady black eyes and thick eyebrows, stood there with a nasty smirk on his face. “Good evening, Mr. Sonnier,” he’d said in a deep, throaty voice with just a hint of smugness in his tone. “Won’t you invite me in?” He flashed his FBI badge.
Wordlessly, his stomach twisting, Max had stepped aside and let him in.
“Do you know a Russian named Aleksander Smorodnikov?” Clinton asked, sitting down on the couch and placing his dirty boots on the coffee table.
He already knows, so don’t deny anything—he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t.
“Yes. Yes, I do.” Max sat down in a chair, trying to remain calm, to keep his hands steady and his voice even.
“How long have you been involved in a perverted homosexual relationship with him?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Max said, his heart rate increasing, his stomach filling with bitter acid.
In answer, Clinton reached inside his jacket and tossed a black-and-white 8x10 photograph on the coffee table.
Max glanced at it but didn’t reach for it.
“He’s a Russian agent, you know,” Clinton went on, his voice pleasant. “So, I suppose the proper question is what information have you been feeding him? You are working with him?”
This isn’t happening to me, Max thought, unable to form words, unable to say anything at all.
“Weren’t you a friend of Alger Hiss? You worked with him when he was with the State Department, didn’t you?”
Alger Hiss—a name he’d never wanted to hear again. “I’ve already been interviewed about that and cleared,” he replied, wiping his sweating palms on the arms of the chair.
But on it went, question after question, Max stammering out answers as his armpits and hands and forehead became slick with sweat, glancing at the phone in terror that Aleks might call in the middle of all of this, feeling the noose of circumstance closing around his throat.
He’d been questioned, of course, like everywhere who’d known him or worked with him in the department, after Hiss was accused of being a Soviet agent, but that had been the end of it. He’d had no idea whether Hiss had been a Soviet agent, a Communist, or if he wasn’t. The questioning had been horrific, absolutely terrifying. What if they didn’t believe him? What if there was money somewhere he couldn’t explain? What if something innocent was perceived as something bad? Had he said something that had been misconstrued?
Bitsy’s snide voice, “Are they going to find out about your perversions, Max? Because if I am humiliated publicly, I may kill you myself.”
It had been a horrible few weeks before he’d been cleared, with apologies and pats on the back and smiles.
That fear, though, had never gone away completely. It had always been there, in the back of his mind.
And now—here it was again.
And this danger—this danger was much worse.
“I’m sorry?” He stared at Clinton, not certain he’d heard the last thing the agent had said correctly, the smirk on his face perfectly in place.
“I said I don’t think you’re a Soviet spy,” Clinton went on. “You’re a pervert, of course, I have lots of proof of that, and you’re consorting with a spy in a way that turns my stomach.” His face twisted momentarily with disgust. “And for that alone, I could ruin you.” He snapped his fingers. “The pictures alone would ruin you. I checked you out,” he went on, the smirk getting wider. “And your wife, she has quite a bit of money, doesn’t she? You’ve got some, too, but your wife, she has a lot more.” His big yellow teeth looked like a shark’s as the nasty smirk turned into a predatory smile, almost like his head was going to tilt back and he was going to somehow swallow Max whole. “I can make this all go away—for a price, of course.”
He’d heard, of course, that the FBI was corrupt—everyone knew about Hoover and the parties he threw at his home that were invitation only, and that the moral corruption at the top of the bureau had filtered its way through the ranks to even the lowliest of agents. “You want money?” he said, not quite believing this was happening to him yet.
“Five thousand should do it,” Clinton said, standing up. “You have a week. I’ll be in touch.” He pointed at the picture on the table. “I’ll leave that for you. Just touching it makes me feel dirty. I’ll see myself out. Men like you make me sick.”
He heard the front door shut. He didn’t know how long he sat there, staring at the black-and-white photograph on his coffee table before picking it up and tossing it into the fireplace, watching as it burned.
He sat down and drank several glasses of Scotch before Aleks finally called, wanting him to come over, angry about something that happened at rehearsal, his outrage only requiring that Max grunt occasionally until Aleks’s anger ran its course and he began purring, longing for Max to come over. He had, walking through the fading light the three or four blocks in the cold, wondering if Aleks was a spy, wondering if Aleks had set him up, was in on the entire scam with the crooked FBI agent. Aleks didn’t notice, didn’t seem any different than he usually was, pouring wine and walking around without a shirt in the overly hot studio apartment, his pale marble skin glistening with sweat he occasionally wiped off with a towel. Aleks was keye
d up, the way he always was after rehearsal, his bare feet sore and bloody in places, but he was so used to the aches and pains in his battered feet he didn’t even notice it anymore, dismissed it as nothing if Max mentioned them.
Max didn’t mention Agent Clinton until much later in the evening.
And the gun was Aleks’s idea.
“You have to kill him,” Aleks said, blowing cigarette smoke toward the ceiling as they lay together in his twin bed, their sweaty bodies entwined. “They always come back. Is never enough money for these peoples, and you’ll never be safe. We’ll never be safe.” He shuddered. “What you think they do with me? They send me back, that’s what they do with me. Cannot happen. You know what they do to me if I get sent back?” His ice-blue eyes widened. “A defector? Who likes other men?” He shuddered. “The gulags would be a mercy.”
He was right, of course, Max realized.
Unless Agent Clinton was silenced once and for all, neither of them would ever be safe.
He’d drank more Scotch when he got back home that night as he made up his mind that he would indeed have to kill Agent Clinton.
There was no other choice, unless he wanted to lose everything.
Are they going to find out about your perversions, Max?
He sat there in his chair, smoking and drinking, until past midnight.
By Tuesday morning his plan had come together in his mind.
But the gun—where to get the gun?
Aleks solved that problem later that night, by putting the gun into his hands.
“Russians can always find guns,” he said matter-of-factly when Max asked the obvious question, his face blank and expressionless. He gave a shrug. “I asked around with the other Russians. One was bound to turn up.” He smiled, a sly look on his face.
Max flinched as a police car came roaring around a corner, its siren blaring and lights flashing. They’ve found him, then, he thought, willing himself to keep up the same pace as the police car went past him, heading down Sixteenth Street NW toward Rock Creek Park, to the grim apartment building where Agent Clinton lived.
Had lived.
But the threat is always going to be there, hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles, he realized as he turned the corner at Q Street. Maybe some of the pictures were in someone else’s hands, there was no way of knowing. Sure, he’d gotten the negatives—but he’d never be able to relax completely ever again.
But at least the cops won’t be looking for me, he thought, a smile playing at the corner of his lips as he walked up to the beige brick building Aleks called home. He slipped his key into the door and walked into the lobby, heading for the stairs instead of the elevator. There are so many files in that cabinet, so many damning pictures of other men in pictures that could destroy them, dangerous negatives that are going to destroy a lot of careers on the Hill and in the District. But mine won’t be one of them. They’re not coming looking for me.
He knocked on Aleks’s door, one sharp rap of his fist against the door. The door swung open and he stepped inside quickly as Aleks shut and bolted the door behind him. His big blue eyes were wide with excitement. “Is done?” Aleks said in a half whisper, his cheeks flushed and red.
Max nodded, not saying a word.
Aleks flew into his arms, showering his cold cheeks and neck with kisses, hugging him tightly. The little apartment was hot, the windows steamed up and Aleks’s thick black curls damp with sweat. He picked Aleks up, and Aleks’s legs went around his waist, and Max carried him over to the bed.
Aleks’s eyes glinted as Max set him down on the bed, sitting down on the edge himself. He reached for a pillow and placed his hand inside the case.
Aleks looked confused as Max raised the pillow.
He pulled the trigger, and the feathers blasted everywhere, but the pillow muffled the gunshot.
Aleks fell backward, a surprised look on his face as the dark red blood began to trickle slowly from the round hole in the center of his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, tossing the gun onto the bed next to Aleks’s body.
As he searched the apartment, looking for anything and everything that might tie him to Aleks, every so often he glanced over at the bed.
The other men, the ones in his past, there had never been any kind of attachment to them. They had just been lovely bodies with handsome faces, passing through his life without leaving any marks.
He had thought Aleks was different.
This is what you get for being a fool, he castigated himself as he carefully went through everything in the desk drawers.
The search didn’t take long. It was only a studio, even smaller than Clinton’s, a 300-square-foot-room with a little kitchenette and a bathroom.
There was nothing.
Max walked back over to the bed. He reached down with a gloved hand and stroked the pale cheek one last time.
His eyes filled with tears for a moment, but he shook his head and walked to the door.
He made sure to lock the door before closing it behind him. The hallway was empty. He headed back for the staircase.
Ten minutes later a fire was roaring in the living room of his town house, and he watched as the negatives and what he hoped were the only pictures of him and Aleks in existence burned to nothing.
They’d identify Agent Clinton’s gun, of course.
He sipped his Scotch. They’d think Agent Clinton had killed Aleks, maybe in a lover’s quarrel of some sort, and who knew who the police would think killed Agent Clinton? There were at least thirty people in his file cabinet with a motive to kill both him and Aleks.
He’d so hoped Aleks wasn’t involved—but every set of photographs, every picture of two nude men locked in a sexual embrace of some sort—the only thing they had in common was that Aleks was one of the men.
He picked up the phone to call Bitsy in New Orleans. As he waited for the operator to put the call through, he closed his eyes again and reminded himself of his little studio apartment in the French Quarter.
Never again in Washington, he told himself as he finished the Scotch. “Bitsy? It’s done…I miss you and can’t wait to see you…yes, I’ve packed and will be heading to the train station in about an hour…”
My Brother’s Keeper
Cottonwood Wells still stank twenty-five years later.
I’d forgotten about the smell from the oil refinery just north of town, near the oil fields where my father had worked. It hung over the town like a shroud, poisonous and foul. When the wind blew from the north the stench was almost unbearable. The trailer park where we lived was close to the refinery, so there was no escaping it. I never got used to it. I learned to tolerate it, like so many other things I learned to tolerate growing up in that town.
And like those other things, I never liked it.
There was a Best Western now at the exit from I-10, with a Days Inn just across the street. I pulled into the Best Western parking lot because it was easier to turn right. I got my briefcase and rolling suitcase from the hatch of my Subaru Forrester. In the distance, on the far side of town, I could see the flaming stacks where excess gas was burned off at the refinery. What used to be fields just on the way into town from the highway was now the enormous parking lot of a sprawling Walmart Super Center, with a Lowe’s on its other side. Like everywhere else in America, Cottonwood Wells had fallen victim to the plastic commercialization of the chain stores. There was a Whataburger and a McDonald’s on the other side of the highway, and a couple of gas station/mini-marts. I could see the fast food signs lined up like soldiers on the way into town: Burger King, Arby’s, KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut. All we’d had when I was a kid was a Sonic Drive-in downtown on the main drag, and a McDonald’s.
I walked into the lobby. It was a standard Best Western, a little worn but not to the point of needing to be redecorated yet. There was a hotel bar called the Mustang Ranch to my right that looked empty.
The woman at the counter wasn’t aging well. She was weari
ng a cream-colored blouse and one of those weird female ties underneath a blazer that matched her skirt. She was wearing too much makeup and her hair was dyed a color that doesn’t occur in nature. She was a little too thick in the middle for her blouse. She didn’t look familiar, but Cottonwood Wells was a small town where everyone knew everyone, and people can change a lot in twenty years. “You have a reservation?” she asked without looking up from her computer screen.
“No.”
“How many nights?”
I considered. I didn’t know how long I was going to be in town, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a minute longer than necessary. I was already sorry I’d come. “Let’s say two.”
“Just you?”
“Yes.”
“King bed?”
“That works.”
“Driver’s license and credit card.”
All this without even looking at me once. I slid both across the counter at her, waiting for the inevitable New Orleans conversation once she saw my license. Instead, she looked up. “Chanse MacLeod? Class of ’94?”
Her name tag said Marla.
Marla. There was only one Marla in our class. Marla Quinn. She’d been one of what my sister used to call the “not girls”—not cheerleaders, not popular, not poor, just kind of in the middle with everything. I remembered her as not being particularly nice, either. There was always a mean, sly look on her face. She was the kind of girl who didn’t want anyone to think she was mean but never had anything nice to say about anyone, and she’d always make it seem like an accident. She looked up at me, and I could see the meanness was still there. “I suppose you’re here because your brother’s in jail? He’s gonna fry, you know.”
Apparently, we were skipping passive-aggressive and going straight to aggressive. “Maybe.” I shrugged. “It’s amazing what a good lawyer could do.” I wasn’t about to pay for a good lawyer for my brother, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Yeah, well.” She smiled, her voice smothered in syrup. She leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper that still carried. “Bobby Cassidy was a well-liked and well-respected member of this community. Can’t say that about anyone in your family.”