Red Rag Blues

by Derek Robinson

  “If you want confirmation, call the British consulate in New York, ask for Harding or …” Luis hesitated, then burned another bridge. “… or Philby.”

  “Fuck golf.” McCarthy tossed the putter into a waste basket. He opened a desk drawer and took out money. “Here’s five hundred,” he said. “Now you’re a consultant. Give me those names.” He took the list. “I must be crazy,” he said. “These goddamn cuckoos are using different names now. How can I trace…”

  “Don’t even try,” Luis said. “Let the State Department do it. And the Treasury. And the Pentagon. You’ve uncovered the treachery. Now it’s their job to smoke out the scoundrels.”

  McCarthy thought about it while he turned the list into a paper airplane and sent it floating across the room. “Come back soon,” he said.

  On his way out, Luis saw Bobby Kennedy at his desk, head down, writing hard.

  “Mrs. Sarah Stone seemed an honest lady,” Luis said. “Has the Pentagon given her job back?”

  Kennedy stopped writing but he didn’t look up. “I advised her to write a letter.”

  “Can she write?” Luis asked. Kennedy didn’t move, didn’t speak. “May I say what a pleasure it has been to meet you,” Luis said, and offered his outstretched hand. Kennedy got to his feet. It was not a handshake. He gave nothing to it. He allowed only the tips of his fingers to be touched, and he withdrew them immediately. It was like shaking hands with a dowager’s glove.

  Luis went out into the hot, dank midday air, feeling thankful on two counts: he had five hundred bucks, and he wasn’t cursed with whatever it was that afflicted Bobby Kennedy. He drove home and parked by the fire plug, where there was always a space. That made three counts.

  4

  Wagner took a seat in the coffee shop on the fourth level, south side, inner segment of the CIA building and re-read the transcript. Before he could finish it he turned it face-down. He knew the bloody thing by heart. An iced doughnut on a plate looked up at him. Why had he bought the wretched thing? His stomach was in knots. Hot knots. What the Americans called heartburn, damned idiots, it was nowhere near the heart, it was acid in the guts, magenverstimmung, that was the word. Thank God, here came Manfred Sturmer. “Bad news,” Wagner said. “Terrible, shocking news.”

  “You broke your recording of Tannhäuserl” Manfred said. “No? Then it can’t be so bad.” He had brought a glass of tea and a thick slice of chocolate cake with whipped cream.

  “Read this.”

  They were an unlikely pair. World War Two had brought them together in Spain, which was neutral and therefore convenient for sending spies to Britain. Wagner still looked like what he had been before he took command of Madrid Abwehr: a tough, fit brigadier of infantry who enjoyed having his staff on the carpet for the pleasure of pulling if from under their feet and seeing them bounce on their backsides. Manfred could never be mistaken for a soldier. He was chubby and a little dreamy; he seemed always to be remembering something amusing. At Madrid Abwehr he had been senior analyst. Everyone had liked working with Manfred Sturmer, he so obviously enjoyed eavesdropping on the enemy. Nobody had liked Wagner but he wasn’t there to be liked, he was there to drive the station forward. In 1953 they were not the only German ex-officers in the CIA, but they had shared many experiences in the Abwehr and for that reason they valued each other’s company.

  “This is surreal,” Manfred said. “Arabel dealing with Joe McCarthy? It’s like finding Hitler in bed with Donald Duck.”

  “We sent Arabel to spy in England,” Wagner said. “Here he’s boasting of being at the heart of Allied counter-intelligence.”

  Manfred spooned down whipped cream while he studied the text. Wagner watched him and swallowed hard to dispel the taste of bile. “Maybe it’s a hoax,” Manfred said. “McCarthy attracts a lot of schmucks.”

  “He gave this one five hundred dollars.”

  “All right, suppose this is Arabel talking to McCarthy. He never actually says he was a double agent, does he? And even if he was, maybe he was screwing the British.” Manfred started on the chocolate cake.

  “No, no. Look at what he says about Allied deception at D-Day,” Wagner said harshly. “Eisenhower called it a counterintelligence masterstroke. He said it bamboozled the Wehrmacht.” His stomach clenched. “How can you shovel down that American muck when I’m telling you that we spent the entire war throwing money at a traitor and a swindler for selling us a pack of lies?”

  “My dear Wagner, do not agitate yourself. It’s not as if this scoundrel Arabel lost the war for the Third Reich. The Russians did that.”

  “Not so loud, man.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “That sort of talk doesn’t go down well in the CIA.”

  “I forgot.” Manfred gave back the transcript. “I am shocked, of course, but surprised? No. I never had total faith in Arabel. Too good to be true. Consider the facts. We sent a flock of agents to England. How many were caught? One in ten? My dear Wagner, was that credible? Convincing? And Arabel’s informants were such staunch spies, so fearless, always harvesting such valuable, such secret information, never getting caught! Transmitting oh-so-long radio reports, night after night, yet constantly evading detection! Did you never think twice about our astonishing good fortune? I know I did.”

  “I don’t care.” This was a lie: Wagner’s thunderously black expression said as much. “Arabel betrayed the Reich. He turned us into unconscious collaborators in his damned counterfeit deceptions.”

  “The deceptions were not counterfeit,” Manfred said. “The deceptions were genuine. Let us be precise about our confusion.”

  “When I think of all that wasted effort,” Wagner muttered. He made his hands into fists, and took a deep breath. “He made puppets of us, Manfred. And if this Arabel thing leaks into the CIA, our careers will be finished. We must find a way to deny it.”

  “Good diagnosis,” Manfred said. “Wrong prognosis. If you gave the problem more thought, instead of sitting there looking like Siegfried after he has trodden in a heap of fresh and steaming dragon’s dung, you would realize that Arabel will be a threat as long as he lives.” Manfred had finished the chocolate cake. He nibbled on the iced doughnut. “Either he or we must die. It can’t be me, I’ve just paid for a series of tennis lessons.”

  “I’ll kill him. I’ll strangle the swine. It will give me pleasure.”

  “First you must find him. Would you recognize Arabel if you saw him? He was one of forty agents whom we sent into England, and that was ten or twelve years ago. People change, Wagner. Arabel might now be bald, or bearded. Or both.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe neither. I kept a picture of Arabel on the wall of my office. He can’t change his thieving eyes, can he?” Wagner scowled at Manfred. “To think I got that bastard the Iron Cross.”

  “And all the time he was selling us horseshit,” Manfred Sturmer said. “You’re looking awfully gaunt, you know. Why don’t you get something to eat?”

  5

  Julie was not at home. Luis was disappointed. He’d had a small triumph; telling her would have doubled the pleasure. He stared at himself in a mirror. A bit thin, he thought. Working too hard, maybe. Immediately he knew what to do. A Frenchwoman in Caracas had taught him how to cook real bouillabaisse. He felt armed and confident.

  He went out, found a fresh-fish shop, and bought some halibut, baby cod, red mullet and whiting. Also shrimp. Elsewhere he got garlic, pimientos, leeks, canned tomatoes and olive oil. The rest, he knew, was in the kitchen.

  She was getting out of Gregg DeWolf’s car as he reached the house. Her tight tennis shirt and short tennis skirt gave Luis the sour taste of jealousy. He swallowed it. “Awfully kind of you,” he said to DeWolf. “I do hope your real-estate activities haven’t suffered from your absence.”

  “He talks like Henry James,” she told DeWolf, “only worse.”

  “Hell of a backhand,” DeWolf said. “I got murdered.” He looked quite happy about it as he drove away. His car was an opento
p Morgan, a brisk little English sports job. Its exhaust growled like a well-fed lion.

  They went inside. “Just as well I turned up, or you’d have kissed him goodbye,” Luis said.

  “I did that already, at the club, on the lips, and what the hell business is it of yours?” she asked cordially, and went away to take a bath.

  *

  Potomac Street drowsed in the afternoon heat. Too early for anyone to come home from work. Hired help had quit for the day. No kids in the street. This time of year, Georgetown kids were high in the hills, in summer camp. So all was calm and quiet. There was even a parking space near the corner. Chick Scatola slid the Chrysler into the slot. “Dunno how long I’ll be, gorgeous,” he said. “You have to go someplace, the can maybe, leave a message on top of the dash.”

  “Like say in’ what?”

  He looked at her. She was serious. A knockout, yes, but also serious and difficult to figure sometimes. “Like sayin’ Gone to the can, back in five,” he told her.

  She hunched up, arms wrapped around her legs, and made her mouth sulky. “Five ain’t enough. First I got to find a place, a bar probly, then us ladies ain’t built like a guy, you just poke it an’ pee, we need time.”

  “Fine,” Chick said. “Back in ten, fifteen. Whatever. Twenty. Take as long as you need, babe.”

  “This message I wrote. Someone comes by, they know. See me come back, they know where I been an’ everythin’.”

  “So what? Everyone goes to the can.”

  “Ain’t nice. Ain’t ladylike.”

  Jesus H. Christ, Chick thought. It had not been an easy trip. When Stevie drove, she drove too fast. Last thing he needed was to get pulled over by a highway patrol wanting to know what was his hurry. And when he saw a motel, suggested take a break, couple of hours, share a shower, make some whoopee, she just said, “I hate that motel.” Mostly what she did was chain-smoke and change the station on the car radio. Now they’re in DC and he has a job to do, she’s pissed because some passing stranger might know she had to take a leak. Ain’t ladylike, for Chrissake. “I never met a lady had any choice,” he said. “I mean, we’re not talkin’ about some optional extra here. Ain’t like you signed up for whitewall tires.” It was a joke, he had a nice smile on, but she just hunched down deeper. I drove two hundred an’ twenty miles to argue about female bladder problems, he thought. But look, she was a dish. Even tied in a goddamn knot, she was a dish. “Listen, this is easy,” he said. “Write the stupid message in code. Write ‘Gone fishin’.’ Write ‘Gone crazy.’ Write anythin’.”

  “Mental health ain’t somethin’ to joke about.”

  He took his briefcase and got out and shut the door and walked away. He did not look back. Women. You couldn’t live with them and sometimes you still couldn’t live with them, and this was one.

  The steambath heat swamped him. He slowed to a saunter, strolling from one shade tree to another, moving like the natives did, nice and easy, and within half a block he saw the Buick, right where he’d been told to look, next to a fire plug. He had Jerome’s spare keys. Nobody was around. He unlocked the car and got into the back. He locked the doors and stretched out on the floor behind the front seats. Not a bad fit. Comfortable enough. He had a compact-model body, five-nine, one-forty pounds, no fat, all he ate was fruit and salad and pasta and every morning he did ten lengths of the pool at the Y, year in year out, result he had stomach muscles so clearcut you could play checkers on them. One reason he’d wanted to stop at that motel was so Stevie could admire these muscles, trace them with her fingertip. Maybe stroke his ass too. It was a perfect curve, that ass of his. Two perfect curves.

  Back to work.

  He took a sand-colored dust-sheet from the briefcase, shook it loose and draped it over himself from head to foot. Didn’t want any snoopy passerby to see him lying there, get curious, call a cop. Next to his hands he put a six-inch butcher knife, a spring-loaded sap, and a short-barreled .32 Colt automatic. He would let this creep Cabrillo get behind the wheel, smack him hard twice and then chop something vital while the creep’s mind was elsewhere. Chick had taken a course in first aid at the Y, he knew what parts were vital. He wouldn’t need the gun. The gun was purely for self-protection. Biggest industry in DC was crime, everyone knew that. Next came politics, which also was crime, well-known fact. Damn city was riddled with Commies, robbing the taxpayer blind. Only man with guts enough to fight ’em was Joe McCarthy. Now there was a guy who kept swinging with both fists. That was the spirit of ’76. The spirit that made America great. Chick rested more easily, knowing that the senator was out there, fighting the good fight. He used the briefcase as a pillow. This could be a long wait. Wrong. It lasted seventeen minutes.

  *

  People never learn. They open the trunk to lift something out, a box maybe, and it’s heavy enough to need both hands, so they drop the keys in the trunk, lift out the box and slam the trunk shut. Force of habit. Now they’ve locked themselves out of their car. Happens all the time.

  Demand creates supply. Walt Garrison, a mechanic with a Washington garage that took a lot of calls for breakdowns, became expert at opening locked cars for people who couldn’t believe how stupid they’d been. He was 35 and in line for promotion and a lot more pay when that job went to his boss’s wife’s cousin, also a mechanic but a knucklehead who couldn’t count to eleven without taking one sock off.

  Walt quit.

  Plenty of other garages wanted to hire him. He didn’t want another boss.

  Next Sunday, as he came out of church, he told the pastor he was searching for a new career but … And he shrugged. “Every man has a gift,” the pastor said. “The trick is to find your gift and make it pay.” Walt thanked him. The pastor smiled: another satisfied customer. Walt strolled around town and stole a blue Mercury sedan, just for practice, and next morning a used-car dealer who wouldn’t know a scruple from a cocktail olive bought it for $500. Walt had found his gift. That was four years ago.

  Three rules kept him out of trouble. He never stole more than one car a week. He only stole cars he could sell immediately. And he never took longer than twelve seconds to get into a car. Longer than that, he moved on, left it.

  He worked Georgetown about once a month. He like the summer afternoons because the heat kept people indoors. There was a Labrador dog stretched out on the sidewalk of Potomac Street but all it did was open one eye as he stepped over it. He saw the black Buick, liked it, and fingered the assortment of picks in his pocket, feeling for the right ones.

  Chick Scatola heard the scratchy tickle of steel and came wide awake in a hurry. This wasn’t right. He held his breath and felt his pulse pounding the sides of his skull. Cabrillo had keys, this was wrong. Then the door opened, someone grunted as he dropped into the driver’s seat, and the door clunked shut. Walt Garrison looked at what he’d got and was pleased. Recent model, low mileage, clean condition.

  Chick Scatola eased the dustcover off his body. Slowly and silently he got to his knees and peered over the front seat. What he saw was Walt Garrison, also on his knees, fumbling behind the dash. “Shit,” Chick said. That was a mistake.

  Walt was so startled that he turned fast and banged his head hard on the wheel. He ended up sprawling on the floor, blood chasing down his forehead, spilling off his nose. It was only split skin but it looked like a hatchet attack. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

  “Get your ass out of here. This is my car, you dumb prick.”

  “Yeah? You sleep in your car?” Walt suddenly found the situation very funny. “Let’s see your license and registration, then.” He tasted blood and now it wasn’t at all funny.

  Chick shook his head, a gesture of disgust but Walt didn’t know that Chick had just driven from New York and didn’t need an argument with this schmuck who was lying beyond his reach or he’d use the sap to bust him up good, except he couldn’t do that because if he did, the creep Cabrillo wouldn’t get into a car with a body in it. Double-shit. “Just beat it, fo
r Chrissake,” he said. “You’re out of your depth, Jack.”

  The blood made the difference. Normally Walt would have tipped his hat, cut his losses and left. But he was bleeding because of this piece of piss who didn’t even want the lousy Buick except to sleep in. Walt spat a stringy mix of blood and saliva. “I need a handkerchief,” he said, and took an automatic out of his pants pocket. “Move your ass!” he shouted and fired a shot past Chick’s head. That too was a mistake. Chick dropped out of sight, grabbed his .32 and pumped rounds through the seat. Most missed. Two hit, the throat and the chest. Then Walt was fighting for his life, aiming low, guessing where Chick was, finally getting lucky with one shot to the head. The firing was all over in eight seconds and both men were dead within a minute, a total waste, the product of arrogance, poor judgment and the taste of blood.

  The best place for a quiet gunfight in a street is inside a sturdy car such as a Buick, loaded with soundproofing. A couple of neighbors thought they heard a ripple of backfiring, went to the window, saw nothing. “People should fix their mufflers,” they said.

  *

  Luis worked fast. Olive oil, chopped carrot, leek and onion went into a heavy pan with a crushed clove of garlic, and all cooked to a golden brown. Meanwhile he boned and cut the fish into chunks. Slid them into the pan, added half a can of tomatoes, some herbs, didn’t have fish stock so a cup of white wine and a splash of water had to do. Simmered the lot until he felt that the fish was nearly done, threw in the shrimp and the chopped pimientos and simmered a few minutes more, seasoned it, squeezed a lemon into it, gave it a healthy drink of wine, and one minute later she came downstairs in a white sleeveless dress that made her look so virginal that his toes curled. Well, some days things ended up right.

  “Bouillabaisse,” he said. “Notorious aphrodisiac. Hungry?”

  “Yeah. Peckish.”