Red Rag Blues

by Derek Robinson

  “I say we find a lake,” Julie said. “Dirt road leads down to it. Handbrake off, windows open a few inches, big splash, air bubbles, two-three minutes, out of sight. In the movies—”

  “No, no. Jesus!” Stevie waved at the scenery. “This Buick is gassed up, the motor’s pumped full of oil an’ shit, you can’t just pollute their water! Which people drink!” Julie was silent. “You wouldn’t like it,” Stevie said, “if West Virginia folk dumped their cars in the Central Park Reservoir.”

  “Forget lakes,” Luis said. “The oil floats to the surface and someone gets suspicious …” He shrugged. “I’ve got a better idea. Set fire to the wretched thing and shove it over the edge. That’s a five-hundred-foot drop. Gas tank cracks open, raging inferno, nothing left to identify.”

  “Gets my vote,” Julie said.

  “I’m ashamed of you guys,” Stevie said. “Here it is, middle of summer, here we are, middle of a forest, trees down there must be dry as tinder, you want to start a forest fire? Jesus! Get smart.”

  Julie flung a small rock into the abyss. “I can see how you wore out three husbands, honey,” she said.

  “I just go by what the signs say. No camp fires except in designated sections of Official Recreation Areas.”

  “How big is a designated section?” Luis asked. “Could we burn a Buick in one?”

  “I threw that rock real hard,” Julie said, “and look where it landed. Brambles and briars an’ suchlike. Never reached the trees. What say we just tip these two over the edge and hope they make a hole in the bushes? Seems like nobody ever goes down there.”

  “’Cept the buzzards an’ the coyotes,” Stevie said.

  They looked at her. “Is that an obstacle?” Luis asked.

  “Hell, no. It’s a solution.”

  They perched the bodies, one at a time, on the parapet, gave a shove, and watched them tumble through space until they got swallowed by the undergrowth. “Now it’ll be easier to lose the car,” Julie said.

  “I’ll give the bloody thing away,” Luis announced.

  By the time they got out of the forest and across the Appalachians and into the town of Harrisburg, dusk had fallen. They drove to a large, noisy bar-diner. Luis left the keys in the ignition and the windows open. They came out an hour later and the Buick was still there. “It’s cursed,” he said. “There’s a hex on it.”

  “So just dump it,” Stevie said.

  “Nobody dumps a new Buick,” Stevie said. “The cops find it, they’ll be in Potomac Street within the hour.”

  “Damn.” Luis kicked a tire. “Damn damn damn.”

  They drove on, until Luis pointed to a roadsign that said Washington Airport. “I have an idea,” he said. “We’ll lose it in the crowd.” He took the airport turnoff. Stevie followed.

  He drove into the long-stay parking lot and tossed the keys to an attendant. “Your lucky day,” he said. “My company just transferred me to Tokyo for ten years. Shan’t need the Buick. She’s all yours.”

  “Kind of low on gas, ain’t she?” the attendant said. But by then Luis and Julie were striding toward Stevie’s Chrysler.

  Nobody had much to say until they crossed the bridge into Washington.

  “Anyway, I never wore out three husbands” Stevie said. “Luis here shot Vinnie. He shot him with that pistol I gave.”

  “You’ve got to get that idea out of your mind,” he said.

  “Never think I don’t appreciate what you done, cus I do. You got my appreciation, Luis, any day. Or night.”

  “Forget it!” he shouted. “You got the wrong guy! I never saw Vinnie. Not alive anyway. Never used the lousy pistol. Not me, lady. Look elsewhere.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Stevie muttered. “They all say that.”

  She parked the car, not by the fire plug. They went into the house. Julie took her to the guest bedroom.

  He was brushing his teeth when Julie said, “Where did you get the names, Luis? No bullshit. I just need to know.”

  He rinsed his mouth, went away and came back with a book called Oregon Or Bust: How The Pioneers Crossed America. “I lifted the names of men who went west by wagon train. Good, solid, convincing American names.”

  “Phonies. Not real people.”

  He nodded. “Senator McCarthy isn’t obsessed with the truth.”

  As they lay in bed, he said, “If Chick Scatola was Sammy Fantoni’s cousin, it’s a fair bet he got sent here by Jerome Fantoni.”

  “Yes. You just worked that out?”

  “Do you think Jerome wants his car back?”

  “Sure. That’s why his gorilla was carrying a sap, a butcher’s knife and a loaded automatic. Stevie told me he was here to do a job, that’s all she knows, but go ahead and ask her yourself, she might open up to you since you gave Vinnie the Creep a hole in the head.”

  Luis went to the guest bedroom. He was soon back.

  “She sleeps in the buff,” he said. “A lesser man would have faltered but as you know I have the pluck and courage of a British grenadier.” He got into bed. “Chick Scatola’s line of work was population control. He whacked people. It’s too risky to live here now.”

  “Damn,” she said. “Just as I figured out how the stove works.”

  FAKE EARTHQUAKE WARNINGS

  1

  Wagner had been writing his memoirs for five years. The stack of manuscript stood a foot high.

  1953 was too soon to seek publication. Timing was everything in life, and when the moment came, Wagner would be ready. Ready to demonstrate that the Third Reich had not been defeated in 1945. The Wehrmacht had run out of war materials—bullets, tanks, fuel, men—but the Abwehr had triumphed in the intelligence war. A victory that nobody could deny.

  And Wagner had been fortunate enough to be in the vanguard of this stunning success. Right to the very end, the Abwehr’s network of agents in England had sent a stream, a river, a flood of secret information. They had given the German High Command a precious insight into what the enemy was doing and planning to do. And Wagner’s best agent, by a mile, was Arabel.

  Wagner’s memoirs were rich with gems from Arabel’s reports. In fact he had enough material to make two books. “I might as well burn it,” he told Manfred Sturmer.

  “Shred it, burn it, dance on the ashes,” Manfred said.

  “I’ll tell you what’s worst. Little episodes keep coming back to me. Do you remember when Arabel complained we were making him work too hard? And we parachuted another agent into England to help him?”

  “Arabel told us he met the man. Said they made a good team.”

  “The truth is, our man must have been caught the minute his boots touched the ground.”

  “Nasty shock,” Manfred said. “Probably got shot. Even nastier.”

  “I’m going to shoot that treacherous bastard as soon as I find him.”

  “Of course you are.” They were silent for a moment, and then Manfred laughed. Wagner frowned. “You must admit,” Manfred said, “Arabel brightened up our dull lives.” Wagner turned away. His magenverstimmung was biting again.

  2

  Kim Philby had checked into Hampton Hotel, near Union Station. Very near. Sometimes his room vibrated as a train pulled out. The bathrooms were shared, the furniture was Gothic, the elevator clanked like a Sherman tank. Not important. It was only half a mile from Capitol Hill. He didn’t know how long he’d be in DC and he hated having to keep tapping Peter Cottington-Beaufort for more money. The Russian ruble was down everywhere.

  He sat on his hammocky bed and thumbed through the Yellow pages. Washington had enough gunshops to beat off the Red Army. He picked out Tab’s Guns because it looked small and simple, and the address was in the Waterfront area. Guide books had two words to say about the Waterfront: Stay away. The area was a generous contributor to Washington’s murder rate, most of which was by gunshot.

  Philby walked there. Everyone he saw was black, or at least brown. He avoided all eye-contact, but he knew he was being stared at, sometimes shou
ted at. Soon he felt that this trip was a very bad idea. On the other hand, he was unlikely to have been followed here by the FBI. The further he walked, the more he felt that the Waterfront represented the failure of capitalism. Not that it promised the triumph of Communism, either. If anybody rules here, Philby thought, it’s Smith & Wesson. So he was in the right place.

  Tab’s Guns was in a side street that had weeds growing in the potholes. Tab was small and thin, and his face was as creased as old brown wrapping paper. Khaki work pants. No shirt. Wire wool for chest hair.

  “I want to buy a rifle,” Philby said.

  “Uh-huh.” Tab made the bar stool rock back and forth. “What you plannin’ on shootin’?”

  “A young buck.”

  “Got your huntin’ permit?”

  “Certainly.”

  “No, you ain’t.” Tab slid off the stool. “This is closed season for deer. Right now the mama deer are havin’ their little baby deer.”

  “Well, later on then.”

  “Man needs a heart of stone to shoot Bambi.”

  They looked at weapons. In the end, Philby bought a high-powered deer rifle with a cracked stock, no sling, and a scratch on the telescopic lens, plus half a box of ammunition, for fifty dollars. Tab watched him handle it, and said sadly, “Only way you’ll kill that buck is he dies laughin’.” He showed Philby how to break down the rifle into three parts. He put them in an old canvas bag stenciled Property of Al Fruit Farms. “I got a coupla bazookas out back,” he said. “You whack Bambi any day you like. Whack that shit Disney too.”

  Philby walked back to the Hampton Hotel. In his room, he assembled the rifle and aimed at his flyblown reflection in the mirror. He made an unconvincing figure, but the bullets were real enough. One squeeze of his finger could change everything. For years, he had been the highest-ranked Soviet agent in the British Secret Service, and even now he was only retired, not sacked, never exposed. He still had good pals, well placed in the Service, who felt he had been badly treated and would welcome him back. But not if this bugger Cabrillo sold him to that sod McCarthy and put him on the American Red Peril hit list.

  One squeeze.

  He put the gun in the bag and hid the bag under the bed and went out in search of his target.

  3

  Luis woke up full of ideas and eager to get to work on McCarthy’s Red Scare campaign, but Stevie was a problem. She came down to breakfast wearing one of his shirts, mainly unbuttoned, and nothing else. “Is he good in the sack?” she asked. “Some guys are all talk an’ no dick, know what I mean?”

  “You got a real knack for picking losers,” Julie said.

  “Us, we’d make a real good threesome.” Stevie drank orange juice. “Him bein’ such a stud, stands to reason—”

  “Forget it. We don’t even make a good twosome.”

  “Ain’t the point. See, I owe him one, from that Vinnie thing he did.”

  Luis chewed bacon. “He was stone dead when I got there, you stupid woman.”

  “It’s the thought that counts. Ma always said—”

  “Listen! We’re leaving here. Moving out today. Where you go is up to you. Just depart. You understand the word go? Here, I’ll write it on your hand, so you won’t forget. Go!”

  “See his eyes flash?” Stevie said to Julie. “That’s the stud in him comin’ out. This boy is hot.”

  The doorbell rang. Luis came back with Gregg DeWolf. Julie poured him some coffee. “Sorry if this louses up your paperwork.”

  “Real estate is all about comings and goings.”

  “The house is fine. It’s a business decision,” Luis said. “Put it down to adverse trading conditions.”

  “The Mafia are chasing us,” Julie said.

  “Us wops always get the blame,” Stevie complained. “It’s Un-American. You got any more eggs?”

  “Stay away from this woman,” Luis told Gregg. “She killed three husbands, a boyfriend and a passing stranger, the last two right out there on the street, yesterday afternoon.”

  “I’m sure your motives were of the best,” Gregg said.

  “Sure,” Julie said. “Her boyfriend came here to pull the plug on Luis and me.”

  “A not unfamiliar situation,” Gregg said. “Many of my clients prematurely vacate their lease.”

  “Chick did that,” Stevie said. “That was his line of work. You stepped out of line, he prematurely vacated your lease.” They were surprised and impressed. “Ain’t stupid,” she said. “People don’t give us wops credit. Who invented spaghetti? Not the Pilgrim fuckin’ Fathers.”

  Luis wanted to go to work. Julie and Gregg discussed where else to live. Gregg suggested an apartment near Dupont Circle: big Victorian building, off the tourist track yet handy for Foggy Bottom, Old Downtown, Capitol Hill. And such good bookshops!

  “Ma said a house without books is like a meal without wine,” Stevie told them. “She wrote books. Not paperbacks. Real books.” Nobody was about to argue.

  *

  Luis worked hard in the Library of Congress, ate lunch, and took the Capitol subway to the Senate office building on Constitution Avenue. He was so excited that he stopped at a men’s room, locked himself in a cubicle and forced his lungs to breathe slowly. And after all that, Senator McCarthy was out.

  His secretary made a brief call. “Mr. Cohn will see you,” she said.

  Cohn and Schine were in a conference room. Luis stopped at the doorway and watched. A curious ceremony was taking place. A long table was loaded with cardboard boxes. Cohn was sitting on the padded seat of a library ladder, looking down at Schine, who took a book from a box and held it up for inspection. He said, “Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt’s book on—”

  “Who cares?” Cohn said. “She’s a goddamn menace.” He gave a thumbs-down.

  Schine tossed it into a bin, and took another from the box. “Biography of Larry Parks,” he announced.

  “Hostile witness,” Cohn said. Thumbs-down. Into the bin. Cohn noticed Cabrillo. “Hi! Joe’s not here. Still drinking his lunch. You brought us some goodies?”

  “And then some.” Luis held up a fat envelope.

  “David, go get Bobby. I need him to take notes.”

  Schine left. Luis moved forward. “What are you doing?”

  “Fumigating. Some jockstrap university got the jitters about its library. Asked us to weed out the pinko authors.”

  “Larry Parks made The Jolson Story. It’s a masterpiece.”

  “He had Red friends, he taints the cinema industry, he won’t work in it again. Want to help? Pick a book.”

  Luis pulled out a handful. Cohn gave a rapid thumbs-down to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, some Dorothy Parker short stories, and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Then he rejected the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

  “Now I know you’re joking,” Luis said.

  “I don’t believe so. Ninety-five clergymen took part in preparing that book. Thirty have identifiable links with Communism, such as they sponsored the World Peace Movement or they signed the charter of the Civil Rights Congress, both of them notorious Communist Front organizations. By definition, that means the other sixty-five clergy willingly affiliated themselves to Red Fronts. Their book has no place in a patriotic American university.” Schine and Kennedy came in. “Got your little notebook, Bobby?” Cohn said. “I want this on the record.”

  “Mr. Arabel should report to the senator.” Kennedy’s voice was flat as sandpaper, and as harsh.

  “It’s my call,” Cohn said. “I’m senior counsel.”

  “Satisfy my curiosity,” Luis said to him. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Eighteen months younger than me,” Kennedy said.

  “It’s what you do with the years that counts,” Cohn said, crisp as cross-examination. “I graduated from Columbia Law School at age nineteen, was admitted to the New York bar and got sworn in as assistant US attorney the day I reached twenty-one. Where were you when you were twenty-one, Bobby
? Playing touch football with your sisters?” But Kennedy wouldn’t answer. “How about you, Mr. Arabel?” Cohn asked.

  Luis thought. At 21 he’d been in Spain, snooping on both sides in the civil war, behaving so recklessly that he deserved to have died a dozen times. “Top secret,” he said. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” Cohn and Schine enjoyed that; Kennedy scowled. “Want to see what I’ve brought?” Luis said. “Not typed up. No time. Had to translate and return the originals in rather a hurry.”

  That got their full attention. “Translate?” Schine said. “What language?”

  “Mind your manners, David,” Cohn said. “Go ahead, Mr. Arabel.”

  “First…” Luis selected a page. “Headed: Report to controller codename Hammer from agent codename Sparrow. Begins: First phase testing new US Army tactical radio at research facility, General Electric, Schenectady, New York State, now complete. Performance figures exceed actuality by 27 percent in range, 35 percent in clarity, 61 percent in anti-static capacity.” He produced another page. “Next: report by codename Arrow to—”

  “Hold it, hold it.” Cohn came down the library ladder. “Who the hell is Sparrow and why should we care?”

  “Senior technician at GE Labs. Tests their new radio for the US army. Secretly alters the results, persuades the Pentagon the equipment performs far better than it actually does. So, millions of dollars wasted, and American soldiers fail to communicate.”

  “Sabotage,” Schine said.

  “Well spotted,” Kennedy muttered.

  “Kinda technical,” Cohn said. “Percentages … Next?”

  “Codename Artichoke to codename Rattle. Message begins: Have infected Idaho crops with Oregon potato blight. Outcome sporadic. Need funds. Message ends, although there’s a page of figures plotting blight density against ambient temperature throughout June.”

  “Outcome sporadic?” Cohn said. “What does that mean?”

  Luis clicked his tongue. “Translation is a problem. In the original language, one word can have different shades of meaning. It could mean ‘sporadic’ or ‘emphatic’ or ‘explicit.’”