Red Rag Blues

by Derek Robinson

  “Max, pleading the Fifth is your only constitutional defense. Fifth Amendment,” Herb told Luis. “Right to silence so you don’t incriminate yourself. Without it, they can demand answers. You refuse to answer, that’s contempt of Congress.”

  “Fuck ’em,” Max said. “If everyone they subpoenaed said go fuck yourself, this shitty Committee would’ve folded years ago. There’s been too much talking and not enough fighting. I’m for freedom and justice, and I’ll do what it takes to get it. Tomorrow, you check the headlines. A new war of independence is about to break out.”

  “Well,” Julie said, “it’ll make one hell of a biopic some day.”

  “Billy Jago could direct,” Bonnie suggested. “Maybe they’ll give him an Oscar for irony.”

  “Billy Jago won’t work again,” Luis said confidently. “He’ll be dead in two years.”

  “What?” Max said. Everyone stopped eating except Luis. He was enjoying his apple pie à la mode. “What did you just say?”

  Luis waved his spoon while he chewed his pie. He kept them waiting. “I’ve met Billy’s sort before,” he said. “One good kick in the crotch, and he never gets up.”

  “Horseshit! The witchhunt gutted him,” Max said. “The guy got screwed.”

  “Don’t we all? I got screwed several times. I didn’t quit.”

  “He’s a damn good film maker. He’ll be back.”

  Luis’s spoon swung, negatively. “I have read his so-called novel, Sweet Cheat. It’s a concealed confession. From the start, Jago makes his hero intolerable. Decent, unselfish, brave. Kind in thought, word and deed. Jago is itching to kill him.”

  “And he dies in the end,” Bonnie said. “I’ve read it too.”

  “Of course he dies!” Luis was enjoying this even more than his apple pie. “The hero is the author! But Jago’s problem is he’s not strong enough to dream of surviving! His awful hero is condemned on Page 1, but he takes an inexcusably long time to depart. As we saw, poor Billy is living up to his script.”

  “That’s a cruel thing to say,” Julie told him.

  “Well, we all saw him. We all smelled him. The man is in a deliberate state of advanced decay.” Luis was looking at her, so he failed to see Max throw a punch that thumped him just in front of the ear. Luis and his chair crashed backward and went through a decorative screen and down two steps and into another table where four Texas oilmen were eating seafood salad and drinking imported lager. They were hungry and thirsty and they seized Luis and flung him back. Max tried to punch him again but Herb overturned the table and Max lost his balance and went down with the debris. Then waiters arrived in a rush and the fight was over. “Put it on my bill,” Luis said. “Just put it all on my bill.” He kept saying it until the manager heard him.

  4

  “So we’ve got nothing,” Prendergast said.

  “We’ve got his name and description, sir,” Fisk said.

  “Cabrillo? Probably an alias. Description? We’ve got too many descriptions, from too many idiots.”

  “I saw him in Hoboken.”

  “Did you?” Prendergast got out of his chair, dropped to the floor, did ten rapid press-ups, and stood again. “Make the heart pump,” he said. “Get extra oxygen in your brain. Think, Fisk. You didn’t see someone robbing banks. You saw a man in Hoboken with the name Cabrillo in his passport, which may or may not have been counterfeit. There are twenty-seven Cabrillos in the Manhattan phone book, never mind Brooklyn or the Bronx. Have you checked them?” Fisk was silent. “Don’t bother,” Prendergast said. “They’re all in Spanish Harlem, they won’t tell you anything. So we have nothing.”

  “We have Mrs. Conroy, sir. We know she’s his partner.”

  “And we have her file. Which you’ve checked?”

  “Yes.”

  “And questioned her Known Associates?”

  “None of them are at the addresses in the file.”

  “Well, that’s New York for you. Peripatetic.” He cocked an eye at Fisk.

  “I know what that means, sir. There is one other link. The British Consulate.”

  “Yes. We already have a transcript of the alleged Cabrillo’s conversation with Mr. Harding, of MI6.”

  “A transcript,” Fisk said. “That means—”

  “Yes, we do. Routine. But all the transcript told us was that Cabrillo’s a former intelligence agent. Proves nothing. Toss five bricks in the Harvard Club and you’ll hit three ex-agents, and they’re all writing their memoirs.”

  “Slim pickings, then.” Fisk didn’t mention the fruit boots. He had lost faith in the fruit boots.

  “We’ve got something. We’ve got patience. This type is a show-off. He’s having fun and making money. He’ll do it again. Can’t stop himself.”

  “Maybe he left. Maybe he’s living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”

  “Not a chance. He likes New York. It’s got what he wants.”

  “Banks?” Fisk said.

  “No, not banks,” Prendergast said wearily. “Excitement. Nobody likes banks, you cretin. The banking system is like the sewage system, only less exciting.”

  “Nobody steals turds,” Fisk said, daringly.

  “Is that what your investigation has turned up? Three days’ work, and you’ve discovered that nobody steals turds?” Prendergast pointed at the door. It was a cheap shot, but then one of the perks of power in the Bureau was making cheap shots.

  I KID YOU NOT

  1

  Luis woke up with a plum-colored bruise above his cheekbone. He found Julie in the kitchen, watching the coffee percolator go bloop-bloop. She didn’t look up. She might have been trying to read a message in Morse.

  “Expensive evening,” he said.

  “You caused it. Max stands by his friends.” She poured coffee and padded away.

  “I thought those oil-chaps from Texas were awfully decent about it, in the end,” he called. No reply. Oh well.

  He shaved and showered and went out to buy the papers. His bruise throbbed in time with his pulse. He saw a big drugstore and went in and asked for an eyepatch.

  “Why?” the man asked. “That eye looks okay. Ain’t black, ain’t bloodshot. Icepack for that bruise is what you need. Buck-an’-a-half for the bag, get your ice at the deli.”

  “Just sell me an eyepatch,” Luis said.

  The man rummaged in boxes. “If you want stuff you don’t need, I got a special on hernia belts,” he said. “Also elastic knee-bandages, ideal for the hamstring you ain’t suffering from.” He put an eyepatch on the counter. “I got incontinence pads, extra large.” He was losing interest. Luis tried on the eyepatch. “Errol Flynn,” the man said. “Captain Blood. Lousy movie.”

  “How much?”

  “Hell, it’s old stock. A quarter.” Luis produced a twenty-dollar bill. “Get outta here, for Chrissake,” the man said in disgust. He walked away.

  Luis sidled out. In Caracas they would have got him a chair, examined his injury, produced a range of eyepatches, offered him coffee. In London they would have apologized and wondered if by any chance he might have something a little smaller. New York turned a simple purchase into a title fight, but he was in and out fast and he got what he wanted. New Yorkers were big on giving you what you wanted. Luis found that encouraging.

  The eyepatch was a success. People glanced at him, especially women. The sun was well up, the air was hot, so he took off his blazer and wore it loosely over his shoulders: the intelligent woman’s Errol Flynn. He looked at himself in a plate-glass window and blinked and changed focus when he realized that someone inside was looking out at him. Clean-cut youngish woman, pageboy haircut, powder-blue smock. It was a hairdressing salon. A window display said Blonds Have More Fun. He went in. “My life has been rather dull lately,” he said. “Can you help me have more fun?”

  “This is no barbershop,” she said, amiably. “And you’re no lady.”

  “Hair is hair.” They were having an amiability contest.

  “You don’t seriously wa
nt to be blond.” Her voice had a cool confidence that made his bruise throb. “Take that chair.” There were a couple of customers in the place, too absorbed in their own treatment to notice Luis. He sat. She put a blond wig on his head. “See?” she said. “Federal disaster area.”

  “Somewhat yellow.”

  “Makes you look like a faggot.”

  “Could I be a redhead, d’you think?”

  She found a hot ginger wig and fitted it. “Now you look like a three-alarm fire. You trying to attract attention?”

  “Actually, I’m on the run from the FBI.” He spoke softly.

  “Yeah? For what?”

  “Bank robbery.”

  She discarded the ginger wig and brushed his hair smooth. “My next appointment isn’t for twenty minutes. Buy me a cup of coffee.”

  They sat in the sun and drank take-out coffee from a corner deli. She said her name was Stephanie Biaggi but everyone called her Stevie because she was slim-hipped and her face was boyish. She was 25 and she lived in the Village with her husband Vinnie, the All-American creep. “He crept for America in the last Olympics,” she said. “That’s the kind of creep Vinnie is.”

  Luis was scarcely listening. He was in love with this brisk, vivid, delightful woman. Was it possible to be in love with two people at once? She had more to say about Vinnie, his low ambitions, his bad breath. “How frightful,” he said. Stunning ears. Enchanting mouth.

  “You’re no bank robber,” she said. “I had a boyfriend was a psychologist, I can pick out types.”

  “You picked out Vinnie.” Luis said it to make her lip curl. He loved that lip curl.

  “Did it on the rebound,” Stevie said. “All my marriages were on the rebound. It began when my fiancé, no warning, ran off with his math teacher. So I hitched up with Danny, age forty, looked sixty, had eighty-year-old kidneys. First I knew of that was on the death certificate.”

  “Nasty shock.” Luis patted her thigh. Two hardhats in a passing truck shouted. He smiled proudly.

  “Then I met Pierre. He was nineteen going on twelve. Face like an angel. Brains like a butterfly. Jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge for a bet.”

  “Oh dear.” He took her hand. She linked fingers with him. “And this led to Vinnie?”

  “One thing that creep can do is drink. He drinks and he pukes. Two things. Drink and puke. Takes a swing at me now and then.” Luis gazed at her choirboy face, appalled at the thought of someone hitting it. “Never connects,” she said. “Drink and puke, that’s Vinnie’s limit.”

  “Not a love-match, then. Why don’t you divorce him?”

  “Both Catholic. The families would die of shame.” She leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. Old, long-forgotten fertility rites began celebrating in his loins. “You Catholic?” she asked.

  “Was once.”

  “I knew it. Soon as I saw you, I knew you’re the one I’ve been saving myself for, and you’re the one can save me.”

  “That’s very flattering.”

  “Nothing to it. Shoot the creep in the head and dump him. Do it tonight. I can borrow a shooter. There’s a really wet bog in Connecticut I know, we’ll dump him there, he’ll never come up. Tonight?” She squeezed his arm.

  “Oh dear. Not possible, I’m afraid.” The fertility rites had shut down. He was at a loss for words; so he said something, anything to get control of events. “I’m sure Vinnie isn’t worthy of you, but… but why me?”

  “Kill him and dump him, and you can make love to me all night. You’ll like that a lot. See, I’m a virgin.”

  Luis gently eased her away from him. “Three marriages?” he said.

  “Losers. I keep picking losers.”

  Luis thought about it. Danny, killed by his kidneys. Pierre didn’t have the brains to stir his coffee. And now Vinnie the lush. It was just conceivably possible that Stevie was the only three-time-married virgin in New York City. The sun shone, as if this were a regular day in Manhattan. Maybe she was joking. He looked at her face. Such loveliness. “Poke the shooter in his ear,” she said. “There’s a hole in his skull, see, one shot puts his brains through the blender.”

  “Look at the time! Your next appointment…”

  She kissed him on the lips. “You’re the one,” she said. “Come see me again.” She walked away.

  Luis felt rattled. He found a large coffee shop and ordered a big breakfast. A stack of pancakes with Canadian bacon and scrambled eggs calmed his nerves. He came out and noticed a used-car lot where a building had been torn down. He took a taxi to his bank, opened his safety deposit box, and half an hour later he was driving a cream-and-brown convertible down Broadway. At Times Square he picked up Seventh Avenue and kept going downtown. He’d seen a big ad in the Trib for Barney’s Men’s Store. He bought three summerweight suits, a dozen short-sleeve shirts, other stuff. They tailored the pants while he waited. Then he drove home.

  The car had a radio. Sinatra sang High Hopes and Luis joined in. When it ended he cried, “That’s a hell of a voice!” Sinatra’s was pretty good, too.

  2

  “The FBI’s got its knickers in a twist about Cabrillo,” Harding growled. He gave Frobisher some typewritten pages. “See if you can make sense of it.”

  They were on the viewing platform at the top of the Empire State Building. Harding put a dime in a telescope and watched some tugs nudging a liner into its berth. Like watching piglets find the teat, he thought. Curiously pleasurable.

  “Well now,” Frobisher said. “This is our transcript of an FBI discussion of their transcript of our conversations with Cabrillo. Isn’t this unnecessarily complicated? If they want to know, why don’t they just ask?”

  The dime ran out. “Perhaps they think we’re protecting him. We did give him a hundred dollars.”

  “He seemed pleased to get it, too, which is odd, because they seem to think he’s a successful bank-robber. How long has the FBI been snooping on us?”

  “Always. A convenient arrangement. They bug our offices. We bug theirs. Now we have a little itch, but they’re the ones who scratch. It helps to know that.” They strolled around the platform. “I like it up here. Even Hoover can’t bug it. And all this …” Harding gestured at the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. “Let’s take the wider view. What do we really know about the man to whom I gave a hundred dollars?”

  Frobisher watched a Constellation turning on to its final approach to La Guardia. “Precious little, sir. Called himself Cabrillo, knew something about Cabrillo’s work for Double Cross, but so did a lot of people in that department.”

  “So maybe he’s not Cabrillo at all. Maybe he used Cabrillo’s identity to get money from us.”

  “Money well spent,” Frobisher said. “I mean, he could be bogus and still have some genuine secrets up his sleeve.”

  “Or he could be a Soviet agent trying to infiltrate us.”

  “Or he might be crackers.”

  Harding shrugged. “Either way, he’ll probably be back. Good! Let him stick his neck out. I’ll cut his phony head off.”

  As they went down in the express elevator, Frobisher re-read the transcript of the FBI discussion. “Two split infinitives,” he said.

  “Go back to the office,” Harding told him. “Make your feelings known. Somebody’s bound to be listening.”

  *

  Luis hurried into the penthouse, tossing boxes from Barneys onto a sofa, and announced: “This you must see, kiddo. I kid you not.” God help us, Julie thought, he thinks he’s learning the language. But she followed him to the window. His enthusiasm filled the air like hay fever. “The creamy convertible,” he said. “I just bought it. Spiffing, ain’t it?”

  “Studebaker,” she said. “Both ends look the same. Can’t tell whether it’s coming or going. Yeah, that’s your kind of car.”

  “Let’s go somewhere! Get the wind in your hair!”

  He was like a small boy on his first roller skates. Experience told her to mistrust his enthusiasms. She looked at the car again.
He’d parked it by a fire plug. Also she was hungry. “I know a good place for lunch,” she said. Experience groaned quietly and said she’d regret this, and she told experience to go piss in its hat. Luis was crazy, had always been crazy; but she was getting tired of being sane for both of them. They went down and drove away just as a cop was approaching the fire plug. “Make a right on Broadway,” she said. “Drive north for about fifteen miles. It’s called Route 9. You can remember that. It’s your mental age.”

  She angled her seat back and let Luis do the work. Manhattan slipped by, the Bronx, Westchester. Sun and wind made her sleepy. The Hudson glinted on their left, the city was long gone, nothing but greenery, you probably couldn’t get a Trib or a gin-and-tonic or a competent, reliable, reasonably-priced hitman anywhere here. Signs appeared. “Tarrytown,” she said. “We’re there.”

  They lunched at a big old clapboard inn that looked as if it had been built lopsided. “I’ll have pigs in blankets,” she decided. Luis rolled his eyes. “Baked oysters wrapped in bacon,” she said.

  “Then the pig is on the outside. It can’t be inside and outside. Where’s the logic?”

  “We’re saving it for dessert. He’ll have the same,” she told the waiter. “Snow peas and baby carrots, and the driest white wine you’ve got.” Luis watched with pride. “I love you when you’re being brisk,” he said.

  “Well, life is short. I’m hungry, you’re hungry, let’s get the kitchen working.”

  “There you go again,” he said happily. “New York is so refreshing.”

  “Yeah? Try refreshing your memory. A few days ago you didn’t have a dime. Now you can rent a penthouse and buy a car. What happened?”

  “I negotiated a series of bank loans.”

  “On what? Banks want collateral. You were flat broke in three continents.”

  “We reached an agreement. The point about money is it’s fundamentally worthless, don’t you agree? Money in the bank goes nowhere, does nothing, it’s a fiction until you give it its freedom, turn it loose, let it do some good …”

  She let him burble on. He wasn’t going to tell her the truth. You couldn’t trust Luis even when he told the truth and backed it up with a 10-year guarantee from the US Supreme Court, because he probably forged that too.