Red Rag Blues

by Derek Robinson

  “Cabrillo was never there, sir,” Chick said. “Nobody will miss him, except the Reds, and who gives a shit about them?”

  *

  Chick Scatola had the face of IBM but it concealed the soul of MGM. He was a passionate man. He cried at hockey games. He took sex very, very seriously, and as a result he got very little of it, but his prospects had changed since Vinnie Biaggi was made into veal. For years Chick Scatola had lusted after Stevie; but he was too decent, too stupid, too honorable, too scared to make his move: Mount Rushmore on the outside, Mount Aetna in the inside. Now she was free and when he offered his deepest sympathies she French-kissed him even deeper and said she was still a virgin after three marriages, what was wrong with men, caught their whanger in their zipper, or what? From then on, their friendship blossomed. He was into her life. Now all he had to do was get into her pants.

  He telephoned her at the hairdressing salon, asked did she feel like a trip to Washington, couple of days, see the sights, eat a bucket of clams maybe. “Why the hell not?” she said. He picked her up in his Chrysler half an hour later. When they hit the Jersey Turnpike the sun was so bright she put on her Ray-Bans. He thought she looked like Audrey Hepburn. And she could share the driving. It was 220 miles to DC. He wanted to arrive fresh. Scatola was not all pure lust. Inside MGM there lurked a piece of IBM.

  A MICK FROM THE STICKS

  1

  Luis spent a lot of time in the Library of Congress. Intelligence reports must be convincing, especially when they were faked. He researched the Red threat to America. There was much to read.

  He took a break, went outside to stretch his legs. A young woman of elfin beauty approached him. “I saw you in the library,” she said. Big gray eyes and a tiny, whispery voice. “You were reading that wonderful book by Senator McCarthy.”

  “Yes.”

  “That man is this nation’s moral compass.”

  “I’ll remember to tell him that.”

  “You actually know him? What a privilege! He fights fire with fire, and let the chips fall where they may. He smoked out the Communists in our midst. It had to be done.”

  “You’re nobody’s fool, are you?”

  “Well, somebody betrayed America.” Her eyes were huge with patriotism, her voice fine as gauze. “Somebody stole our atom bomb secrets and gave them to the goddam Russians, and that was after we went over there and beat that bastard Hitler, and then this sonofabitch Stalin takes all eastern Europe from us, and now we had to save Korea from the Chinese, and today no country, not even America, is safe from the evil tentacles sent to suck our blood by the Communist fucking juggernaut.” There was a little foam at the right-hand corner of her mouth.

  When Luis got home, he repeated the conversation to Julie. He mentioned the foam. “She felt very strongly,” he said.

  “Well, I was blacklisted,” Julie said. “I feel fucking strongly too.”

  “I forgot to tell her that.”

  “No, you didn’t. You chickened out.”

  “My mind was on higher things. Money,” he said, before she could ask.

  “Bullshit.”

  “The two are often confused.”

  2

  The rain drifted north and left Washington to stew in the kind of humidity that grows fungi in clothes closets and sweaty headlines in newspapers.

  A bunch of reporters were hanging about in the shade of the Capitol building, hoping that some news would fall out of the sky like birdshit, when they saw Senator McCarthy heading for the Senate Office Building and they closed in on him. Later they pooled their shorthand notes and agreed on a common record of question and answer.

  Q: How you feeling, Joe?

  A: Fine. You ought to ask how America feels about President Eisenhower’s promise to clean out all the security risks he inherited from the treasonous Truman administration.

  Q: The White House say they’re working on it. What’s the rush?

  A: I’ll tell you what’s the rush: regaining national honor, that’s the rush. Our government is still riddled with Communists, fellow-travelers, Truman-type Democrats guilty of blood-stained blunders and when the Soviet agents scream so loudly about McCarthyism, they betray themselves as obviously as they’ve betrayed their country. You got all that?

  Q: Got it. What about the senators who criticize your methods? Accuse you of improper conduct?

  A: You mean Ralph Flanders.

  Q: That’s one.

  A: The guy’s a medical miracle. Only man in the world who has lived so long with neither brains nor guts.

  Q: So this flak doesn’t bother you, Joe?

  A: Not a bit. But the Commies like it. See the Daily Worker yesterday? “Throw The Bum Out,” it said. That’s me. Their hatred knows no bounds. And if the Commies hate you … Work it out for yourself.

  Q: You must be doing something right, is that it?

  A: You said it.

  Q: Got a story for us, Joe?

  A: Soon. I got names, big names. Can’t say more. Not yet.

  Got to protect my source.

  Q: Give us a quote, at least. Something.

  A: Sure. Want to know what makes me see red? Streaks of yellow in high places.

  3

  This time the secretary recognized Luis. “The senator will see you straight away, Mr. Arabel,” she said. She opened the inner door and was about to lead the way when she glanced at a black woman sitting in a corner. About forty years old, plain dress, plain face, you saw thousands like her every day in DC, clearing tables, mopping corridors, walking somebody else’s dogs. “I guess he forgot you’re here, honey,” the secretary said. “Let’s see if we can smuggle you in too.” The woman stood up and flicked a look at Luis, just enough to check him out: see he was not old, not poor, not sick and not black. Lucky man.

  In the senator’s office, men were laughing. Except Bobby Kennedy, who stood apart, silent, hands in pockets, looking like he’d found a dollar and lost ten. The noise came from two young men who were bragging to McCarthy. “We hit the deck running,” one said.

  “Dust hasn’t settled yet,” the other said.

  “You want evidence of subversion, senator? We found a truckload over there.”

  “That’s terrific,” McCarthy said. “I mean, that’s appalling.” He led the laughter. He saw Luis and waved him forward. He did not see the black woman and she retreated to a corner. “Mr. Arabel! Come in, have a drink … Meet these gung-ho foreign investigators. David Schine, consultant, Roy Cohn, the Subcommittee’s chief counsel, this is Mr. Arabel, he trained Commandos, so Bobby says. Be good to him or he’ll break your arm in five ways.”

  “Seven,” Luis said. “Bourbon and water, please.” They all shook hands. At first glance, Cohn might have been McCarthy’s son: same black hair combed straight back, same thick brows over heavy-lidded eyes. But the nose was short and blunt, where McCarthy’s was a snowplow; and plenty of girls would have settled for Roy Cohn’s shapely mouth and lips. By contrast, Schine had well-groomed blond hair and a chubby, forgettable face. He looked like the sidekick.

  “We’ve been fumigating the State Department’s activities in Europe,” Cohn told Luis.

  “Libraries and stuff,” Schine said.

  “You wouldn’t believe the sheer quantity of subversive Red literature we threw out,” Cohn said.

  McCarthy gave Luis his drink. “I’m gonna kick State’s butt until I shake out the traitors responsible,” he said.

  “We really hustled those guys,” Shine said. “The goddamn librarians were clearing their shelves before we arrived. Biggest purge since they invented California Syrup of Figs.”

  “The newspapers said you purged Dashiell Hammett’s detective stories,” Luis said.

  “Hammett’s a Red,” Cohn said. “Refused to testify. Contempt of Congress. Went to jail.”

  “He’s a fine writer.”

  “And he was a Party member, for Christ’s sake!” Schine said. “True Americans don’t need Red propaganda disguised as de
tective stories.”

  “Interesting. So who should a true American read?”

  “Mickey Spillane,” Schine said confidently. “He’s got a great private eye. Mike Hammer. Enjoys killing Commies and he isn’t ashamed of it.”

  “We don’t kill Commies,” McCarthy said. “We simply make sure they don’t louse up America. Simple problem, simple solution.” He noticed the black woman, patiently waiting. “What you here for, sweetheart? Delivery? Pick-up?”

  “Senator,” she said, speaking softly because it never did any good to raise your voice to a white person, “I’ve come to ask you to get me my job back again. Please.”

  McCarthy was munching peanuts. “You mean, your boss done sacked you? He’s a Red, huh? Got evidence?”

  “No, sir. Your sub-committee, it got me sacked. You told the Army, you said I was a code clerk, sir.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Cohn said. “Pentagon employee. You’re Mrs. Sarah Stone.”

  “I worked in the kitchens, sir,” she told him. “Prepared vegetables and such. Never was a code clerk.”

  “But, you had Communist links,” Cohn said. “We connected you with a staff writer on the Daily Worker.”

  “Deputy editor,” Schine said. He clicked his fingers. “Ted Randolph. Right?”

  “Sir, I never knew him,” she said. “Man I knew was a different Ted Randolph, colored gentleman, drives a truck, married my cousin. I told the Army, but …”

  McCarthy tossed ice-cubes into his glass and made them swirl.

  “I got three children, senator. Their daddy’s dead. I can’t get no job, nowhere, not since …”

  Luis could smell boredom in the air. Everything had been going nicely until this black woman made a damn nuisance of herself. Shee-it.

  “Bobby, take care of it, would you?” McCarthy said.

  Kennedy ushered her out. The door thumped shut.

  “Anybody’s drink need freshenin’?” McCarthy asked. “Mine does.”

  Schine moved fast to fill the silence. “Senator, we think you could score big on this book-purge idea. Here’s a lady on the Indiana State Textbook Commission discovered that Communist teachers have orders to push the Robin Hood story hard, because he robbed the rich and gave to the poor.” Schine held up a newspaper clipping. “She says, quote It’s just a smearing of law and order unquote.”

  McCarthy half-closed his eyes. “Can we ban Robin Hood?” he wondered.

  Cohn said, “We need fresh meat, senator. All those showbiz radicals, Paul Robeson, Larry Adler, suchlike, they’ve been done to death. That horse won’t run.”

  They sat and drank and watched him prop his head on his fist and try to make a pencil stand on end. The fifth time it fell over, he quit and straightened up. His knuckles had left a white mark on his face. “The American Legion’s gonna turn up here in half an hour,” he said. “You boys go and dream up some crackerbarrel ad libs for me.” Cohn and Schine went out.

  McCarthy put his feet on his desk and rested his glass on his stomach. Luis, sitting on a sofa, put his feet on a coffee table. For a while the only sound was the sigh of air conditioning.

  “Politics is work, Mr. Arabel,” McCarthy said. “Folk don’t realize how much work. Some soda jerk in Broken Arrow, Wyoming, watches TV, sees a guy in a Brooks Brothers suit, nice tie, white Stetson, makin’ a speech full of bullshit that ends Thank you, my friends, God bless America! And everyone cheers, and the soda jerk thinks Jeez I could do that, easy. Wrong. Ain’t easy.”

  “The art is to make it appear easy.”

  McCarthy thought about that, and moved on. “I get hate mail. That really burns me. Get plenty of love mail too, but some people out there want me dead. Say I’m just a tool of Wall Street, mouthpiece for millionaires. Say I’m in this anti-communist crusade for what I can get out of it… Jeez, if I wanted money I’d never have left the law. I was the youngest Circuit Judge ever elected in Wisconsin, did you know that? Fastest, too. I granted divorces on the courthouse steps, two people decide their marriage is bust, why horse around? They know best. You married?”

  “Thinking about it.”

  “I dated Bobby’s sister Pat for a while. Not to be. Kennedy kids all fart in perfect pitch. I’m just a Mick from the sticks. Didn’t keep me from becoming godfather to Bobby’s firstborn. That’s why I love America, this great democracy, it took me all the way from a tarpaper shack in backwoods Wisconsin to the chairmanship of one of the most powerful Senate subcommittees.”

  “The giddy heights,” Luis said. “Where eagles soar.”

  McCarthy wasn’t listening. “See, I’m not a innovator,” he said. “Not a pioneer. Definitely not a radical, God spare the mark. I’m a simple man, and I simply give America what it wants. What it needs. What it’s thankful for.”

  He took a swig of drink. Luis realized he was a test-audience for a speech the senator was rehearsing. Hence the little gestures.

  “I didn’t introduce loyalty boards. The Truman gang did that. They panicked when they knew Americans ceased to trust their government. I didn’t smoke out the atom-bomb traitors. Staunch patriots in the House Un-American Activities Committee, led by now Vice-President Richard Nixon, did that good work. But Americans everywhere could still smell rotten apples in the barrel. They asked me to enhance the crusade against security risks. I’ve done much. There’s still much to do.”

  “Enhance,” Luis said. “Enhance. I like it.”

  “Yeah, well.” McCarthy yawned. “Sorry. Had a late night.”

  “Your crusade needs enhancing, senator, because from what I read you’ve made enemies in Washington, important people who are not security risks.”

  Now the rehearsal was over. “There’s a few delicate flowers,” McCarthy said. “Supersensitive sonsofbitches. You’ve got to enjoy the rough-and-tumble of politics, swap punches and share a drink later, no hard feelings. Soldiers are the worst crybabies. Marshall won’t even say hello to me.”

  “Marshall.” Luis recalled the name from his Double-Cross days, misinforming the Abwehr about Allied plans. “Not legendary General of the Army George Marshall?”

  McCarthy shrugged modestly. “I upset him.”

  “Quite an achievement.”

  “Well … let me see … This is from memory, now … I said he was involved in a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.”

  “And he took offense?”

  “Two years ago. Won’t speak to me, won’t shake my hand. He’s either very, very touchy or …” McCarthy hoisted his brows “… I scored a hit. Take your choice, I don’t give a shit, what matters is now. You brought me some of those non-slime snails you were talkin’ about, Mr. Arabel?”

  Luis took a sheet of paper from an inside pocket, unfolded it, and wasted a moment checking its contents.

  “Henry Tappan,” he said. “Lansford Hastings. Stephen Meek. All in the State Department. In the Treasury: Osborne Cross. At the Pentagon: Byron McKinstry and Lucius Fairchild. Bureau of Indian Affairs: Helen Carpenter. Central Intelligence Agency: Marcus Whitman. That’s enough for now.”

  McCarthy swung his feet off the desk. He opened a drawer and took out a directory, wet a finger, raced through the pages. “Pentagon’s got no Byron McKinstry and no Lucius Fairchild.” The book got slung into the drawer. The drawer got kicked shut. “You’re jerkin’ me off, Mr. Arabel.”

  Now Luis took his feet off the coffee table, but instead of sitting up, he stretched out on the sofa, hands linked behind his head. “You didn’t really expect to find them listed under their real names, senator,” he said. “You’re too smart for that.”

  “Real names. You’re saying you’ve got the real names of … what?”

  “Of cuckoos. Communist agents who have been inserted into government departments where they operate under new identities. In KGB jargon, cuckoos. After the heartless habit of the bird—”

  “Yeah, I know about cuckoos. Toss the eggs out the nest and lay their o
wn.” McCarthy rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Kind of crude, isn’t it?”

  Luis turned his head and stared. “I didn’t select the codename, senator. Blame the KGB. Their jargon has always been slapdash.” The pulse in his neck was hammering. Last bend before the home straight.

  “The hell with cuckoos. Question is, what can I do with these names?”

  “Surely not. The first question concerns remuneration. No money, no more names. And I can get plenty.”

  “Yeah? Where from?”

  “From an expert cuckoo-wrangler,” Luis said. “And believe me, cuckoo-wranglers don’t come cheap.”

  McCarthy found that so funny, he spilled his drink. He walked over to the sofa and Luis had to raise his knees smartly or McCarthy would have sat on him. “Maybe you’re a cuckoo, Mr. Arabel. Maybe the Kremlin sent you. Why should I believe you?”

  Grudgingly, Luis got ready to play his ace. It wasn’t much of an ace, the card was old and bent and dog-eared, but it was all he had. “This is utterly confidential,” he said. “Men’s lives are at stake here.”

  “Sure. Speed it up, I’ve got the Spanish ambassador at three.”

  “Certainly. My whole career has been in counter-intelligence. I’m a spycatcher. Throughout the war, I was at the heart of Allied planning. Now I’m a freelance consultant. I’m not short of contacts. We spooks stick together. Friendships forged in battle. General Eisenhower described our operations during D-Day as masterstrokes that bamboozled the German armed forces.”

  “Hot shit. How did you do that?”

  “Rather like fly-fishing. You see, the trick—”

  “Fuck flies.” McCarthy got up and found a putter and practiced strokes with an imaginary ball. “Who can vouch for all this bullshit?” His grip was wrong; he changed it.