“No, it’s not important, Liv,” I’d finally answered. Then, repeating myself: “Welcome home.” This time smiling. She’d burrowed closer, sighed happily, and we’d fallen asleep.
A good memory, I supposed. So why did I have so much trouble slipping back to sleep this night?
CHAPTER 5
LOGAN SKERRILL, LIKE THE REST OF US IN O.N.I., HAD MADE DO with a shared cubbyhole of an office. The lone window offered a view of the Washington Monument. On the desk, carefully arranged stacks of papers, tabbed folders lined up symmetrically. Familiar tempo clutter: Hulking steel safe for classified files; corkboard pinned with a messy quilt of maps, placards, graphs; jutting file cabinet drawers; dark glass jar of mucilage, cap off, its brush poking ruined bristles up toward the fluorescent light; colored onionskin carbons—orange, yellow, goldenrod, green—scattered like fallen leaves, the autumn of our paper war. Typewriters and telephones substituting for M1 carbines and hand grenades, Dictaphones for detonators, mimeographs for Mustangs; the smack of staplers serving as our rifles’ reports, manila our combat green. Maybe I didn’t know war firsthand, but I’d seen its wake—Pearl a watery cemetery, giants half-fallen in their graves—and sometimes, with the war drawing to a close, I looked around our offices and couldn’t escape the thought that nothing we did here contributed to victory.
Skerrill’s office mates, Lieutenant Samuel Warrington and Lieutenant Commander Dean Breit, were at their desks when Terrance and I came in. We didn’t know them well. Warrington looked to be in his mid-thirties, medium height, paunch swelling his khaki shirt. Blowsy face, flat, wide nose, start of jowls. Breit was trim, with dark hair and brooding eyes behind wire-rim glasses.
Introductions didn’t take long; they knew why we were there. Terrance sat at Skerrill’s desk, I pulled up a chair.
“Helluva thing, isn’t it?” Warrington said.
“Yessir,” I said, and left it at that.
“Heard you took over from the locals,” Breit commented.
“They’re not too happy about it, sir,” Terrance said.
“We’ve been going through Skerrill’s Amtorg file since this morning. Here.” Warrington plucked a sheet of notebook paper from his desk and leaned forward, swivel chair creaking.
“What’s this?” I asked, taking the sheet.
“First two names, the Russians Skerrill was tracking. After that, their known contacts since arriving. About six, including three Russians attached to the embassy. Always a bad sign.”
“He kept good notes, Skerrill did,” added Breit.
“Thanks, sir.” I handed the sheet to Terrance without looking at it.
“You don’t want to go over it with us?” Warrington asked, irritated.
“Not yet, if you don’t mind, sir,” Terrance said. He folded the sheet in half and slid it to the side. We’d decided to be blunt and swift.
“Sir, what did you think of Skerrill being a fairy?” I asked.
Warrington’s eyes flashed with anger. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“What is this?” Breit demanded.
“We don’t like this any more than you do, sir, but this turned up at his place.” Terrance tossed the matchbook to Breit.
“The Sand Bar? So what?” Breit handed the matches to his partner.
“Oughta be called the swish bar,” I said. “Your boy Logan, sir, looks like he met men late at night in Lafayette Square.”
“No, no, you’re all wrong,” Warrington said, shaking his head.
“How? How are we wrong, sir?” asked Terrance.
“Because we’ve seen Skerrill pick up girls. Many times.” Breit spoke slowly but emphatically.
“So he put on a show, sir,” I said. And if anyone was good at putting on a show, it was Skerrill.
“He did not put on shows,” Warrington shot back. “He bagged these broads and took ’em into bathrooms or back hallways and they came back smiling, with their blouses and skirts not quite the way they were when they left.”
“Also part of his act, sir,” I said. “Probably some B girls who pretended to go along with him for a fiver.” But what Warrington was saying about Skerrill and the girls rang true, sounded just like the Skerrill I’d known at the Funhouse. Skerrill had slept with scads of girls to cover up being a swish? That didn’t make sense.
“Jesus Christ!” Breit exploded. “Some Red just murdered Skerrill and you’re in here talking him up as a homo? What the hell kind of investigation is this?”
“Like Voigt said, we have evidence besides the matches, sir,” Terrance tried.
“Fuck your evidence.” This from Warrington.
“Look, sir, maybe we should come back later, after you’ve had some time to let this news sink in,” I offered. But Warrington and Breit didn’t need time to collect their thoughts—Terrance and I did.
“No,” Breit said before Warrington could answer me, “we’re finished with you two.” He snatched up the list of Amtorg names. “And if we have anything to do about it, you two are finished fucking up this investigation. Get the hell out. You’re dismissed.”
We left, Breit slammed the door. An ensign from the Coastal Information section paused in the hallway to look at us. We ignored him and started back to our office. I shut the door, we dropped into our chairs.
“That was rough,” Terrance said. “Guess you work close with a guy for a while—that kind of news has gotta be hard to take.”
“They seemed awful sure.”
He lit a cigarette, blew out a mouthful of smoke. “You tell me my wife’s stepping out, even show me a mash note, what do I do?”
“Deny it. Get angry at me. Kill the messenger.”
“Right. Let those two cool off, they’ll come around.”
“Something is off, for sure.”
“Yeah, Skerrill was a swish,” Terrance quipped, but neither of us chuckled.
“How do you explain the girls?”
“Putting on a show, like you said. Skerrill was a good actor, right? Played that part down in Mexico, fooled the landlady into thinking he was loaded.”
“I’ll give you that, he was a damned good actor.”
“See? Plus we got the evidence from his room. That kinda stuff doesn’t just appear by accident.”
That’s the problem, I thought, but before I could say anything, the telephone rang. I picked up the receiver to hear Paslett growl, “You two, my office, now.” He hung up without waiting for a reply.
Terrance didn’t bother to ask who had called. He stubbed out his cigarette, sighed, and followed me out the door.
PASLETT DIDN’T EVEN SPEAK, JUST GLOWERED, AS WE STOOD IN FRONT of his desk like two miscreant school boys.
“You were right, sir, Logan Skerrill was hiding something,” I said.
The glower got worse.
“Sir, if you told me Voigt’s a homo, I’d be awful upset, too,” Terrance tried.
“Breit and Warrington went straight to the director after your little chat,” Paslett finally said.
“We’ve got evidence, sir,” Terrance said.
“Yeah? How about the evidence of what an asshole you two make me look like. Did you forget me telling you how steamed Sixteen-Z was that I took this investigation? But you two idiots barge in, tell them Skerrill’s a homo, and what? They’re gonna name off all his queer-os?”
We didn’t answer. Paslett stood and walked to his lone window, back to us. Over his shoulder the reflecting pool was just visible, its shallow water glinting in the morning sun. “Why do you think he was a homo?”
We took turns describing what we’d found in Skerrill’s apartment.
“Then how do you explain Cross-check finding him shacked up?”
“His cover, sir,” Terrance promptly answered. “Lotta swishes, they live with women, right? Cross-check just never saw Skerrill’s true sweetheart.”
“More guesses.”
“There’s a pattern here, sir,” Terrance continued. “We just need time to collect more evidence.�
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Two patterns, I realized, but I decided to keep that to myself for the moment. Before I said anything to Paslett, I needed to run my hunch by my partner and see what he thought. This wasn’t my investigation—it was ours.
Paslett grunted and returned to his desk. “You get one more day. We took this case to see if Skerrill was a Red, not to investigate his love life. The director’s made it awful clear that if I don’t have evidence—and that means proof, not guesswork—by tomorrow of what Skerrill was into, he’s kicking this case back to M.P.D. And if I have to do that, you two spend the rest of this war in A-Seven. Understood?”
Understood. A-7 oversaw the O.N.I.’s Central Files: rows of metal shelves; stacked, leaning boxes; legions of file cabinets; reams of blank Russell Index system forms. We’d be better off trudging guard paths at the Navy Yard.
“Sir, if I may?” I asked cautiously.
He nodded curtly.
“What makes you think Skerrill was a Red? Just his behavior on the Amtorg case?”
Terrance shot me a disapproving look—leading questions irritated Paslett as much as wishy-washy answers. But this time, the approach worked.
“It’s not just Amtorg. The spike in the Russians’ cable traffic occurred right after the Bermuda Special arrived in port.”
We caught his drift. Whatever the Bermuda Special’s mission, the Russians wanted to know about it—what if Skerrill had told all? But a spike in coded cables might just mean the Russians were shaking trees, trying to learn something. The traffic alone wasn’t proof of a traitor. For Paslett to be so worried meant—
“What did the Bermuda Special do, sir?” I asked.
“Uh-uh, not yet,” he said. “You two don’t need to know anything about that to turn Skerrill’s life upside down. I want you digging deep, to China if you have to—no more poking around his boarding house, sipping tea with his landlady, got it?”
And with that, he dismissed us and we returned to our office.
TERRANCE DROPPED HEAVILY INTO HIS CHAIR. HE WAS A SHORT, compact man. Massive hands, thumbs and palms as thick as drum legs. Wiry black hair cropped short, almost shaved; dark, unreadable eyes. To say his jaw was square was an exercise in understatement: you could shoe a horse on that chin. He had a wide smile, but his natural expression suggested a father who’s just learned his youngest daughter is pregnant. Even when he tried to look emotionless, his lips tucked downward into a scowl.
“We could check out the houses listed in the Cross-check reports,” he said. “See if a swish answers the door.”
“Don’t need to,” I said firmly.
“Why not?”
“Breit and Warrington are right—Skerrill wasn’t a swish.”
Frowning, he said, “So how do we explain the matches, the note, the—”
“He wanted us to find them,” I interrupted. “Think about it. First I come across the mark in the book about Lafayette Square. We wonder why it’s there but not too much. Then I find the matches, you find the note. Suddenly we think we’ve got a pattern.”
“It is a pattern,” my partner said, but I could hear doubt creeping into his voice.
“What’s the one consistent thing we know about Skerrill?” I pressed.
“He was neat, way too neat.”
“Guy like that, say he wants to make it look like he’s got a secret—how would he do that?”
Now Terrance saw where I was going. “He’d plant some clues. But he can’t just leave them lying around, that’s too obvious.”
“Right. So he plants ’em where he knows they’ll be found if someone gives his room a good going-over. Someone with investigative experience, who’ll look for a pattern, even if it’s not obvious at first. Someone like us.”
“Sonofabitch, he set himself up to look like a homo. But why would he do that?”
“Because whatever Skerrill was hiding, he’d rather have everyone think he was a homo than know the real secret.” I looked down at the photos of the murder scene, the 8" by 10" glossy prints strewn across my desk. In one, Logan Skerrill’s battered face, eyes open, stared back at me. “Even if his secret got him killed.”
“But if Skerrill wanted us to think he was a swish, why would he want Cross-check and Sixteen-Z to think he was a Casanova—another false front?”
“No, this is a joe who’s gotta be in control and have everything perfect, right? Every i dotted and t crossed. Doesn’t ring he’d put up two fronts.”
After a pause, Terrance said, “Unless he had to.”
“Right. I’m thinking—hoping—he made a mistake the first time they watched him.”
“So Cross-check always following him to some broad’s place, him not coming out till the morning—he was establishing another pattern. Making them think he was predictable. Uninteresting. Not a risk.”
“And drawing their attention away from what he did the first time they followed him.”
“Whatta you know, maybe the commander’s right about ol’ Logan Skerrill,” Terrance said.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves—we don’t know if Cross-check got anything.”
He stood up and said, “Let’s find out.”
CHAPTER 6
HARD NOT TO THINK OF CROSS-CHECK, OFFICIALLY OP-12-D, AS THE RAT squad. Any way you cut it, we were going to have a rough time with them. Not only had an investigation been taken away from them, but if I was right, then they had also missed something during a routine check.
Kirkendall, a lieutenant commander, smirked when Terrance and I appeared at their door.
“Look who found the first floor.” He was bald and thin, with features—slanted brows, crooked smile, narrow eyes—that wear well behind a pawn-shop counter.
Ray Brompton, the senior officer, looked up from his desk.
“Sir,” Terrance said, addressing Brompton.
“Daley.” Brompton was about forty-five, maybe older, a career officer who had weathered the interwar years only to see the best wartime assignments fall into the hands of the post-Pearl crowd who had cruised through Officer Candidate School in less time than it takes to shakedown a Liberty ship. But Brompton had only himself to blame. Terrance had told me he had been burning up the Special Activities Branch until he got caught colluding with a staffer on the Senate Appropriations Committee to fund an operation to find out if a steel mill in Indiana was illegally selling battleship-grade plate to Italy. Brompton’s mistake was to let Indiana’s senior senator, whose son-in-law ran the mill’s export desk, trace the line item back to him. This same senator sat on the naval appropriations subcommittee—Brompton was lucky he was still in the O.N.I.
“We need your file on Logan Skerrill’s cross-checks, sir,” Terrance said.
“I bet you do.” His tone was even, uninflected. Florid complexion, fleshy face, pouches under his eyes.
“On your way to the Sand Bar, boys?” a lieutenant j.g., Russell Ames, said mockingly.
“You know the way; why don’t we follow you there,” I said.
Ames just sneered—he knew they had us by the shorts.
“What’re you looking for?” Kirkendall asked.
“We need your reports for Skerrill’s last three cross-checks, sir,” said Terrance. Anticipating a rough time, we’d decided to first ask for something other than the first file.
“And why is that?” This from the fourth officer, Freed, another lieutenant j.g. Young, sandy brown hair, pale eyes, skinny. Tapping a pencil against his desk, like a schoolboy anxious for geometry class to end.
“Seeing as how he got himself murdered, we’d like to find out who did it,” I said.
“Oh, is that what you do now—solve murders?” Ames asked sarcastically.
I lit a cigarette, said nothing; Terrance, leaning against the door frame, also said nothing.
Brompton broke the silence. “Well, you know we’d like to help you, but we’re still writing the field report.”
As if a completed report mattered, with Skerrill dead. No point in saying th
at; Brompton would frostily remind us it was “for the files.” One of the petty bureaucrat’s many trump cards, that phrase.
“What about your search of his room?” Kirkendall feigned seriousness. “Surely that must have turned up all the evidence you need. For your murder investigation.”
“Or did that lead you on a wild swish—I mean, goose chase?” Freed chortled. The others snickered.
“Maybe we could take the files you’ve already reported?” I asked. Nudging them toward what we really wanted.
“I don’t know, we might need to look something up.” Brompton waved his pen in the air, as if casting a spell. “To finish the current report, you know.”
“How about just the sleeve for the first check?” Terrance asked quietly.
“I guess that’s okay. Jim, get the folder,” Brompton said to Freed.
Shaking his head in disgust, Freed walked over to a locked file cabinet, spun the combination lock, took out a folder, handed it to me. Brompton stood and plucked a softbound logbook from his cluttered desk. “Sign here,” he said, motioning to me.
I scribbled my initials, we left. In the corridor, Terrance smiled wryly. “Starting to wonder how many ways we can fuck ourselves before we straighten this investigation out.”
Holding up the folder, I said, “Let’s hope this helps.”
But neither of us made a move to open the folder back at our office. We fidgeted in our chairs, smoking, not speaking. A day wasn’t much time to make things right.
“Want to do the honors?” I finally asked.
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