by Alan Furst
“Thanks man, for taking care of business. I’ll get back to you.”
I watch a little daytime TV while waiting for Villegas. This only gives me an appetite for what I’m going to do. If Villegas hurries up, we can be back in business by the end of the week. About two horn's later, he knocks at the door. He’s lost quite a bit of weight and looks different without the Zapata mustache. “Hey man, how goes it?” We do the brother handshake. “Good. How’d you like to take a little trip?”
“On the road or in the head?”
“On the road. If it all works out, you can go home and see your old lady and your cat. Maybe even take your exams, who knows?”
“No shit?”
“No shit, but we got to scheme and connive a little bit.”
“That’s beautiful man, I’ll do anything. I can’t stay in that fucking Brooklyn forever. This fugitive number sucks. The first coupla days it was about half-exciting, but it gets tired, it gets real tired.”
“Tell me, you still holding that gun?”
“Right in my pocket. We ain’t gonna kill anybody, are we?”
You should only know, I think. “No. Nothing real crazy like that. We got to take a ride down the Lower East Side, I’ll tell you on the way.”
Takes us a hailf-hour to get down there, and we knock on Grover Dill’s door. I tell him what we want and why and he says for 200 bucks he’ll do it while we wait. That’s fine and I cough up 200. After about an hour, he’s got it done. The kids who are heads and about fifteen or so now are really wild. Nobody knows what they’re thinking about. Dill is about six feet and awkward like a colt, with long thin blond hair, wire-rimmed glasses and an absolutely dead-white skin color.
He’s ripped on something or other and chuckles and snorts to himself the whole time he’s doing our project. He keeps saying “You people, you people” and I wonder who the hell “we people” are? But the finished product is even better han I hoped for, dials, wires, alligator clips, a black metal box about the size of a stereo amp. Anthony and I grab some dinner, and with our little machine covered with newspaper we get in about 11:00 p.m. which is just right timing.
On the way down, Anthony tells me a lot about himself. He’s about like I thought, his parents really were short-hoe farm workers in East Texas. He tells me that the army was the best thing ever happened to him, in a way. When he went in, he was bagged for auto theft— the judge said the army or the jail—he was eighteen. He knew that there was mostly bullshit in the world. But the army taught him how it all came down, who bullshitted who, how, and why. He knows I had goodies when I was growing up and that I put at least the straight side of it down, but he likes some fancy shit, and if he can shuck and jive his way through law school and still do some people some good, well, what the fuck.
We stop once on the way down and buy a cassette tape recorder, a roll of adhesive tape, and a length of clothesline.
Jamestown Road is hidden in a great suburban maze. When we find Roosevelt’s house I’d say he upgraded from his last property. Funny, every time I’m with Villegas we seem to go looking for something or other. There are signs of life in the house on our first pass, faces going by windows, dog and kiddie toys on the lawn, a smoking hibachi on the patio. Backed up to the house is a foundation with contractor’s toys all around, mixers and cement blocks and Do Not signs. There isn’t any place to park inconspicuously, ’cause somebody has got them mercury vapor lamps lighting up the world— no doubt in fear of the black hordes descending from D.C. to sodomize the poodles and scarf up the barbecued steaks. We find a singles apartment complex several blocks away and park there and walk back, circling the construction and stashing ourselves behind a cinder-block wall.
The household is getting ready for bed. Toilets flushing, sinks running, Johnny Carson doing a monologue. “What now?” Villegas whispers.
“We wait ’till he comes outside.”
“That could be tomorrow morning.”
“So we wait until tomorrow morning.”
“These guys’ll come to work at seven-thirty or eight.”
“Okay. Gets to be seven and he doesn’t show, we’ll try something else.”
But it doesn’t get to be seven. Roosevelt walks out the back door with a small collie on a leash. He’s smoking a pipe and wearing yellow bermuda shorts and a madras sport shirt' and sandals. When Roosevelt gets about ten feet away, Villegas jumps up, automatic in hand and says “Freeze or you’re dead.” Roosevelt’s eyebrows go shooting up his forehead and his pipe flips out of his mouth and lands on the lawn. Villegas moves quickly behind him and says, “March.” The dog is jumping around trying to figure it out, but Anthony just moves it out of his way with a foot and Roosevelt says “Quiet, Soupy.” We crouch him down with us behind the wall. Suddenly he recognizes me and a little muscle in his cheek starts to dance. “Listen to me, Red, and get it right the first time,” I say. “Fuck around with us and we’ll kill you right here. And whoever comes out of that house to see what the noise was. You’re gonna tell your old lady you’re going out for a while and we’re gonna get in your car and go for a ride. Got that? You’re not gonna go inside, you’re gonna yell it in from the garage and take the dog with you. Clear? Tell me it’s clear.”
“It’s clear.”
We go single file around the house to the garage, entering through a side door. Roosevelt opens a door that reveals the kitchen and says “Honey, I have to go talk with some people. I’ll be back later. Don’t wait up.”
“What?” comes from upstairs. We jump in the car, Roosevelt driving and Anthony sitting directly behind him with the gun in the back of his head. The door to the kitchen opens just as he starts the car and Villegas and I duck down on the floor. “Gee whiz, Ed, what you doin’ goin’ out like this so late?” He waves and backs the car out and we pop up again.
“Good,” I say. “Now drive out the strip, we’re gonna find us a motel where we can talk, but take this street here about five blocks and stop at that singles apartment.” He does. I get out and pick up Grover Dill’s contraption.
In ten minutes, we drive up to the Rest-Well Motel and I register and pay the sleepy clerk. We hustle Roosevelt into the unit and sit him down on the edge of the bed. Anthony and I pull up a chair and a luggage rack to sit on.
“Okay my friend. Now we’re going to have a little talk and get this whole thing unravelled, but first I’m gonna tife your hands just so we can all relax and have a good talk.” His hands, which are pudgy and white with red hairs on the backs, I tie with clothesline.
“You guys are crazy to do this. I suggest you call the cops and I’ll recommend that they take it easy on you.”
“Balls. You’re not gonna call anybody. Do you know who this is?”
“No.”
“This is the great international spy Anthony Villegas.”
“Oh. Hi Anthony, sorry I can’t shake hands.” Villegas and I look at each other ’cause we expected a big reaction. “Look fellas, if you keep me here any longer or harm me in any way, the Agency’ll be after you forever. You’ll never rest, and they’ll get you. No matter where you go, they’ll track you down and kill you or worse. So let’s just end this whole thing right here. You go back wherever you came from, and let me go home. Maybe I can convince my boss that this wasn’t such a hot idea.”
“Who’s your boss?” Anthony asks.
“Nope, fellas, you know I can’t talk about certain things.”
“You can’t?”
“That’s all secret stuff. I’m trained not to reveal it.” Anthony, who we decided in the car would play the heavy, puts his face right up next to Roosevelt’s and says “And we are trained to make you reveal it.”
“Ah, don’t give me that spy movie crap.”
“Hey man, I’m gonna go get our little machine. This guy needs convincing,” Villegas says to me. I press my lips together and look worried. “Don’t do that, he’s gonna cooperate.” I turn to Roosevelt and say “Now or later, man. They all talk when
they feel what the machine can do. This machine, now this machine was invented by some very heavy bikers in California. If they get burned on any kind of deal or someone tries to turn ’em to the cops, they just use this machine to find out what’s going on. You don’t want us to do that, do you?”
Roosevelt doesn’t say anything. He’s in a sort of funk, looking from me to Villegas and back again trying to figure if we’re serious or not.
“What about it, Red?”
“Cut it out,” he says, “now you just cut that out. You can’t scare me. You better let me go. You hurt me and you’ll be sorry. Now untie my hands, this isn’t funny any more.”
“It never was funny. No, it ain’t been funny for about two weeks now. It’s been real serious.” Villegas stands up quickly and leaves the room. In a few seconds he’s back with the machine which he places, still wrapped in newspaper, at Roosevelt’s feet. I take the’ roll of adhesive tape out of my pocket and before Roosevelt can say anything more, I wrap it around his mouth a few times. He’s sweating like crazy now, his eyes open real wide behind his glasses. He can’t believe any of this.
We unwrap the machine so that Roosevelt can see all the dials and voltage regulators and meters and switches on the face. We take the cord, a big thick one from a stove, and plug it into an outlet. Roosevelt’s eyes are getting wider and wider, he’s beginning to believe that this can actually happen to him. I turn up the left-hand dial and the machine makes a loud, loud, buzz and vibrates with power as the needles jump around. From the back of the machine comes a long black cord, the kind you use on headphones. At its top is a device about three feet long that looks like a stethoscope except it’s got metal clips where the ear pieces would be. And where the chest-listening piece would be is a little metal circle, about two inches in diameter, with an adjustable turn-screw on the outside.
I turn down the machine to low buzz and clip the top pieces into each of Roosevelt’s nostrils. Then I unbutton his bermudas and unzip his fly. When he sees where I’m going to put that circle he starts going “MM-MMM-MMM-MMM” behind that tape. I say “Are you ready to talk now?” He nods “yes” violently. Villegas says “Ah man, let’s give him a little juice. After a coupla jolts he’ll be needle-dick the bug fucker for sure.”
“Nah,” I say, “let’s try him out first,” and I rip off the adhesive tape, taking a good bit of red hair from Roosevelt’s neck.
“Okay, okay. You win.”
“Good,” I say and turn on the tape recorder. “Who’s your boss?”
“Miles Gifford.”
“What department does he run?”
“Take this thing out of my nose. Please.” He’s pouring sweat down his face and his legs are jiggling like crazy. Most of him’s gaga with terror, but a small part is still trying to keep its dignity.
“No, let’s just leave that there in case we need to convince you a little bit. Now, what department was that?”
“General Administration.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Oh, you know, that everything gets done. Meals get served, grass cut. Toilet paper in the stalls.”
“What exactly do you do?” He pauses for what seems like a long time. I just hope to hell the poor fat little bastard doesn’t start to cry, his face muscles are bunching up in that direction. Jesus! Why am I pursued by such pitiful fucking people?
“I’m a dietitian.” He says it in a very tiny little voice.
“Not a spy?”
“I make sure the meals are balanced, that there’s a green vegetable, roughage, the right amount of starch. You know. It’s an important part of institutional food service.” He watches the tape recorder spinning away.
“Let me get this clear. You are in charge of making sure that the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America get their roughage every day?”
“Yes. Vitamins and minerals. All that. It’s a very important job.”
Villegas says, very quiet, “Your wife know you have this job?”
He almost cries, snuffles a little past the clips in his nose, and says “Please don’t tell my wife.”
“She thinks you’re a spy, huh Ed?”
“Yes. I fibbed a little when I met her. I didn’t know I’d fall in love with her. Her brother is this big, tough cop, her father was a county sheriff. It was very important to her. I never got around to telling her the truth.”
“That’s Byszka?”
“Yes.”
“Was this your idea? Killing this guy over here?” “No. Byszka asked me to do it. He set it up. I had to do it.”
“Who’s Clyde Moss?”
“Somebody Byszka knows. That isn’t his real name.” “What is his real name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why’d you tell me your real name?”
“So you’d call the Agency and check it out. They only say that somebody is an employee. They don’t give job classifications on the phone.”
“How do you know that?”
“Byszka told me. He checked me out before I married his sister.”
“Did you hire a guy to kill me?”
“No.”
“You’re lying, Red. I think maybe you need a few words from the machine.”
“Yes.”
“How’d you find him?”
“I got talking with one of the agents from New York. In the lunchroom. I sort of got around to talking about the Mafia. He said they drank at this bar. Scaduto’s Bar, in Brooklyn. I went there and hung around until I saw a guy and talked to him and he said he’d do it for $2,000.1 gave him a thousand.”
“What was this guy’s name?”
“He said his friends called him Johnny Solo. Said he always worked alone. He lives in a mansion in New Jersey. That’s what he told me.”
Poor sad-ass Norman Gulich, I think. Johnny Solo who always works alone. Lord save the creeps from themselves. “Why did you do that?”
“When I read in the paper about the body being thrown in front of my old house I thought It was Villegas. I thought you were going to blackmail me. I got scared. I just got really scared, so I went to New York and found a Mafia hit-man. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“How’d Byszka know about me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why’d you agree with Byszka to do this thing?” “Well, he said they had this problem. That it was a conspiracy. That there were foreigners involved.” “You’re lying Red. You might as well tell the truth.” “You’re a real smartass hippie, aren’t you? Whatta you know about real people?”
“He found out, didn’t he? Found out that you worked at the CIA but that you weren’t an agent. Was gonna turn you in to your old lady. Maybe to your boss. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I could talk like them, act like them. I wanted to be an agent. I applied. I’d completed a major in college in Institutional Nutrition Management. I was working at a school district in West Virginia. They offered me that job instead. About a year later I met my wife. She was a secretary at the Commerce Department. One thing led to another and we got married. The first time I met Ray, that’s Byszka, she really laid it on him about me being a kind of super-cop. I just played along.”
“See where it got you.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“I’m gonna give this tape to my attorney for safekeeping. You better hope nothing ever happens to me, ’cause even if I get hit by lightning, it’ll go to all the right people. We’re going to see Byszka next and finish this thing once and for all. If you call him, I’ll fink on you, man. We’ll have your ass. You understand me?” “Yes. Please don’t tell anybody.”
“That depends on you,” I say and take the clips out of his nose. I untie him and he zips up his pants. He just seems tired now. Villegas and I pack up the machine and the tape recorder and, with Roosevelt, we silently get in the car and drive back to the singles apartment. The dog jumps around in the back seat the whole way and Anthon
y pets it. He has his gun in his pocket. Roosevelt tells us the names of the different neighborhoods as we pass by, trying to be friendly, like we all got in this together so let’s be buddies. He drops us off and says “I’m sorry. There just wasn’t anything else I could do.”
“Bullshit,” I say half out of the car, “you enjoyed it, man.”
He doesn’t say anything, just looks ahead and as I close the door, he turns around and tells the dog “Be quiet Soupy, goddamit,” and the dog shuts up and he guns the car and drives away.
Villegas and I stow the stuff in the car without talking. It’s very late and the stars are out and we can hear August cicadas and crickets by the road. I’m very tired, but I push myself in behind that wheel, start the car, and turn the radio on. Villegas says “Scary, man. Very scary.”
“Really.”
“You know, we’re all they have.”
I’m just about completely out of places to go by now, and another motel would punch a hole in my sanity stash, so Villegas agrees to let me sleep on the couch of his hideaway in Brooklyn. His new friend, a very dark lady named Rochelle, fixes us bacon and eggs when we get back, and we spend the whole day lying around, reading newspapers, smoking a little weed, and eating up the ice box. Rochelle wants to know what the hell we’ve got wrapped up in the newspaper, so we show her the device, where it clips into the nose and encircles the schvontz. We turn up the dials and get it to buzzing and vibrating and whirling voltage meters. “Crazy,” she says, “what would happen if you clamped that thing to someone and turned on the juice?”
“Not a thing” Anthony says. “The guy that made it for us built a fantasy torture machine for somebody with fantasies about torture.”
“There’s an on/off switch here on the other side. What do you suppose happens if you turn that on?” “Whatta you know about that?” I say. “I never saw that.”
“Turn it on, man,” says Anthony.
I do.
Loud and clear comes WBLD-FM, a heavy rock station.
“Dig it,” says Anthony, “real torture.”
“Well,” I say, “now I know who made some teargas pens for Tom Lieberman.”