I was no wireless expert, but I knew that radio transmissions didn’t require protective structures and sheathed portals. The “radio” and “transmitter” were substitutes, cut-outs for the actual equipment depicted. I had no idea what that gear was, but I bet the recipient did—this drawing surely wasn’t the first one Dr. Nagel had passed to H & H.
The picture was simple enough for a child to copy. Or Ted Barston, hurriedly sketching with a stubby pencil on the torn envelope. The drawing was to scale—a tiny but legible formula in the lower righthand corner read 1:15—but did I have time to make my lines the same length as the original’s? I checked my watch: it had stopped at 12:54, just about the time I’d arrived at the Quaker meeting house. Cursing the entire company of Timex, from its president and board down to its charwoman, I estimated how much time had elapsed since my encounter with Nagel. At least thirty minutes, which left me a half-hour at the most to render my copy of the drawing, buy a replacement envelope, and return to H & H. So much for a facsimile; an approximation would have to do. I drew quickly, silently appreciating the basic lessons in draftsmanship we’d received at the Funhouse. At this, too, Logan Skerrill had excelled, demonstrating an aptitude for a naturally straight line. He had been able to draw, to act, to charm; to get ahead and impress his superiors. And look where it got him, I reminded myself.
I carefully folded my copy and slipped it into my pocket. Firing up the Ford, I got back on Connecticut and drove south. There was a People’s Drug Store on Dupont Circle, I could buy an envelope there. No spots, so I double-parked, not bothering to click the flashers on. Inside, I found the stationery I needed lickety-split, but—just my luck—only one clerk was on duty, and the line was long. I hustled back to the druggist’s counter.
“Ring me up, pal, huh, I’m in a hurry.”
He didn’t look up from the pills he was sorting. “No can do—see the sign?”
Prescriptions Only—No Exceptions! read a small placard taped to the sliding glass window.
“C’mon, all’s I’m buying is one lousy envelope.”
No answer, just a long shake of his head. Now I’d lost my spot at the check-out. If I’d been thinking, I could have slipped the envelope into my shirt and strolled out before I even got in line the first time. No choice but to wait now, glancing with dread at the wall clock. 1:51. Tick, tick. . . .
When I finally got to the cash register, I waved the envelope at the clerk, slapped down a nickel, and rushed out without waiting for my two cents change.
“S’ppose you think you’re more important than the rest of us, huh, Mac?” The question came from a joe in a gray flannel suit, pinned tie, and homburg. He was standing in front of the Ford, his arms crossed.
“What?”
He turned his glare toward Greene’s car, as if it had just said a dirty word to him. “Can’t be bothered to find your own parking spot, so you block the rest of us. Because of course we don’t mind waiting for you, do we?” He capped his sarcasm with a wave of his hand at the gleaming Packard I’d parked in, obviously his car.
I almost lost it, could feel the anger ripple through my innards and tighten my arm muscles. Just as the flash bulb of the police photographer’s camera had brilliantly lit, for a split-second, the alley where Logan Skerrill had been killed, I saw, in finely etched detail, the next minute. I’d approach Mr. Peeved Citizen, offer a sheepish grin, start to apologize—and then sucker-punch him, right in the gut, leave him breathless and unable to stand. I’d catch him by the elbow and walk him to the curb, let him down gently, telling any curious passersby that he’d tripped and almost got hit by a car. But I couldn’t afford a scene, couldn’t risk a good Samaritan running over to help, couldn’t take a chance on this joe getting his voice back and yelling for a cop.
“Get da hell outta my way,” I growled, pushing past him and yanking open the driver’s door, which I hadn’t locked.
“Wha—Hey! You can’t talk to—”
I slammed the door shut on his sentence. For a moment he appeared ready to plant himself in front of the car, but then he had the much better idea of stepping back to avoid being run over. I squealed the tires getting back into traffic, cutting off a car and earning myself a long, angry honk. Maybe that driver would get out so he and my new friend could carp about the general deterioration of polite society.
If there were bats out of hell overhead, I beat them speeding back to H & H, pulling into the alley at—I hoped—a little past two. I refolded the drawing of the two structures and sealed it in the envelope I’d just bought. After studying the signature on the original envelope, I quickly scrawled Joseph Charles across the flap. A handwriting expert could tell the difference, but I was betting that neither Himmel nor Silva had such training, that they wouldn’t even look closely at the signature. Even if they did, I was confident my copy would pass muster. At the Funhouse, we’d been trained in the basics of forgery. How to study initial strokes, measure ascenders, gauge pen pressure, avoid hesitation marks. I slammed the car door shut and went in by the rear door.
Himmel scrutinized the envelope, which I brought him straight away. He held it by the corner with his thumb and forefinger, peering at it through his reading glasses, then turned it over and studied the signature on the flap for a long, agonizing moment. Did I leave a damp mark when I licked the glue? I suddenly wondered with dread. Himmel set the envelope down, smoothed it flat with his fingers, and looked at me impassively. I checked the urge to ask if anything was wrong—I was just Ted Barston, a dishonorably discharged shipfitter second class who did what he was told and didn’t give a damn what his boss was up to.
“This is all Mister Charles gave you?” he asked.
“Yessir.”
“Nothing else?”
“If he had, it’d be right dare in front’a you, boss.”
He nodded slowly. “Ted, do you know the story of Pandora?”
“Never heard’a him,” I promptly answered. Barston, of course, wouldn’t know the legend of the young girl who had opened a box she should have left closed.
“Good. You should keep it that way.”
“Sure thing, boss,” I said breezily, lighting up as I left his office. Why hadn’t I checked the flap before I came in! I reminded myself that I didn’t know if Himmel had noticed anything wrong with the envelope. I did know I had looked it over before I got out of the car—surely I would have noticed a trace of saliva, a tiny gray stain, along the flap. With all my training, I couldn’t have made that kind of blunder, right? But I couldn’t picture the envelope as it had appeared during my last look. Your memory must be a camera, we’d been told over and over at the Funhouse. Take picture after picture. I’d been so worried about being on time, I’d forgotten this elementary rule.
No choice but to forge ahead. Himmel, himself well-trained in spycraft, might just have been trying to unsettle me, dropping hints that an innocent man wouldn’t think twice about but that a plant like me would fret over. And moles who are always looking over their shoulder don’t see what’s in front of them. But I had to stop worrying about the envelope and concentrate on my next tasks: deliver my copy of Nagel’s drawing to Terrance and Commander Paslett and toss Silva’s flat while she was still at the office. Miriam had mentioned that Silva never left before five o’clock. I had just enough time to set up my meeting with Terrance and Paslett, find out where Silva lived, and break in. I could only hope she didn’t have a roommate, a dog, or nosy neighbors.
CHAPTER 20
ON MY WAY OUT OF H & H, I GAVE MIRIAM A WINK AND A FOLDED NOTE. Hey, kiddo, wanna go dancing? (the note read). Meet me at the Rainbow at 8. I needed to keep her happy, keep her thinking she was my gal, and see how much more I could squeeze out of her about Silva and Skerrill. From a telephone booth in a diner, I called the Irving Street Apartment Hotel, using a coded message to schedule a meeting in two hours with Commander Paslett and Terrance at the billiards parlor. I needed to know why Skerrill had been posted to the Bermuda Special. If Paslett
had any reservations about giving Terrance and me the goods on that mission, he’d fast forget them once I handed over my copy of Nagel’s schematic.
The odor of grilled onions and frying hamburger meat reminded me that I hadn’t eaten for hours. I bought two burgers to go, smoking a cigarette while I waited for the counterman to wrap up my order. I caught my reflection in the mirror behind the coffee urn. Greasy hair, stubble, circles under my eyes. You look like hell, Barston, I thought.
I greedily ate the sandwiches as I finished the walk to the Jefferson Club, using the brown paper bag as a napkin. A grand old dame in a worsted skirt suit and a hat with a feather boa wrinkled her nose in disgust as she passed by. Whatever else happened that day, I’d done a bang-up job of offending proper society.
The Jefferson Club lobby was empty save for a wizened old-timer wrapped in a blanket, murmuring to himself. Most of the residents were either “working”—cadging, panhandling, going through trash cans—or already spending their wages at the nickel beer gutbuckets that had settled on Ninth Street like flies on dogshit. I unlocked my cubicle and retrieved the burglary kit from my rucksack. I’d only packed a few picks, a tension rod, and a shim, but if I couldn’t get into Silva’s flat with just those tools, I deserved to be sent back to the Funhouse.
SILVA WAS IN THE DIRECTORY. HER FLAT WAS ON H STREET, NE, JUST east of the rail tracks leading into Union Street. I took a bus, disembarking a few blocks away so I could get the lay of the land. H Street was a wide stretch of clothing, shoe, and jewelry shops rubbing shoulders with druggists and diners. Silva lived on the third floor of a brick building typical of the neighborhood: on the first floor, a mom-and-pop store, in this case, a hat shop, with inset show windows; and above, two floors of apartments, their narrow windows overlooking the street. I walked by, briefly glancing at the racks festooned with hats. The afternoon sun inked shadows on brick walls. I doubled back through the alley. The rear lot of Silva’s building contained a ramshackle garage and a garden that must have been abandoned the previous fall. Matted parsley and sage plants, their leaves shriveled and black, looked like discarded mopheads. I swiftly mounted the exterior wooden stairs. If anyone asked, I’d been sent from H & H by Silva to fetch a file she’d forgotten. But if the second floor tenants were home, they didn’t come to their rear window to see who was coming up the steps.
I knocked loudly. If a dog barked, I’d leave; if a roommate answered, I’d pretend to be a panhandler. No response, so I turned to the spring lock, which had a run-of-the-mill five-pin tumbler. I inserted the tension rod and a small pick, nudging the triangle-sized pickhead to rake the pins while leaning close. At the Funhouse we’d been trained to stand upright while we worked a lock, so that a casual observer would think we were just having trouble with the key. The lock yielded in less than a minute. I slipped in and shut the door, checking to see if I’d broken a thread or freed a slip of paper tucked between the door and frame. Nothing.
I shut the door behind me, looked around. Living room with the usual furnishings and a few framed photographs on the plaster walls. Silence except for the tick of a clock on a side table and my breathing. Two windows overlooked the street, a sickly fern on the sill. To my left was the kitchen, a galley. I started in the lone bedroom, which directly adjoined the living room—no hallway. The bed, a double, was unmade, the rumpled sheets and quilt bunched up on the left side, smooth on the right. So she’d slept alone. The night stand was cluttered with hair pins, an alarm clock, and a cork coaster atop a precarious stack of books on Renaissance art. No ashtray. In the drawers I found a manicure kit, lipsticks, condoms, a pad of paper, dull pencils. I bent to look beneath the bed; nothing but dustballs. I went through the dresser drawers, checking the neat stacks of sweaters, sorting through a frilly mass of panties and brassieres. On the wall were two framed diplomas, a B.A. and M.A. in art history from Columbia University, and a photograph of Silva standing in front of a sun-dappled fountain with three other young women. The closet was a mess: stacks of books that had fallen over, boxes of notebooks filled with notes, a card file with a timeline of Italian art, empty suitcases, a pile of winter coats that resembled a hibernating bear, and hanging clothing. The bathroom was tiled in postage-stamp-sized ceramic pieces that looked recently scrubbed. Nothing unusual in the medicine cabinet: cough syrup, aspirin, toothpaste and brush.
I moved into the living room. Two tall bookcases jammed with works on art, world history, and political theory. A long, low couch with matching chair. Coffee table bedecked with a gargantuan ceramic ashtray and six matching coasters. In the front closet, a card table, four folding chairs, and several empty hangers. On the wall, framed black-and-white photographs of a European-looking city—my guess, Rome. A magazine rack next to the couch held old issues of Look, Time, and a directory for federal offices in Washington.
The kitchen was well kept. No dishes in the sink, stovetop wiped clean. The icebox held some cold cuts, sliced cheese, and a jar of mayonnaise. And eight bottles of beer. The freezer was empty save for two trays of ice cubes. I checked the cabinets: a box of pasta noodles, a can of tuna, a tin of oatmeal. I pawed through the oats, to see if Silva had hidden anything there, but she was smarter than that.
I went back into the living room and sat down on the sofa. The table clock read 3:13. Still lots of time, but I didn’t want to push my luck. I hadn’t expected to find much during my cursory walk-through, just wanted to get a feel for how Silva lived. What she ate, read, wore; how she relaxed and what was important to her. So far, I knew she was not a wartime newcomer to the capital because she lived alone in a decent-sized apartment. She had money, or came from money—Ivy League degrees in art history don’t come cheap—but she didn’t display any photographs of her family. Her bedside reading told me Silva was still interested in art. The boxes in the closet told me she had once worked as a teacher or a college lecturer. Had she planned on becoming a professor? Managing a clipping service was a big step down, but not if Silva believed she was serving a greater cause than educating young minds about Raphael and chiaroscuro. So when had she turned Red? Did she come from a progressive background, were her folks well-heeled do-gooders who believed in noblesse oblige and all of that? Had she seen fascists force-feeding castor oil to communists while living in Italy?
Reminded myself the why didn’t matter. What had been Silva’s relationship with Logan Skerrill? There were a few signs Silva wasn’t as attentive as she should have been in concealing her secret life. The beer in the icebox, the oversized ashtray on the coffee table, and the folding chairs in the front closet hinted at late-night gatherings. Not with H & H’s stables of spies, of course—that would be a yawning breach of security. More likely, Silva was a roper, a recruiter, the over-educated sophisticate who searched for Red-leaning civil servants in positions of interest to the party.
I knew I shouldn’t make too much of it, but why did she keep a directory of federal offices next to her magazines? To look up the people she met at parties? It was illegal for federal employees to belong to the Communist Party, but, like a parent’s admonishment to never open that drawer, the ban had only increased the party’s allure. Left-leaning bureaucrats with an itch for excitement were ripe fruit for the likes of Silva and Himmel. Sitting on the sofa, I could easily envision the set-ups. Invite the targets over for a casual evening of drinks and conversation, let the topics drift to politics, let the guests reveal what they honestly think about Roosevelt and the New Deal. Subtly plant the notion there’s got to be a better way, yes . . . ? Invite them back, take a book from the shelf. Press it into their hands, implore them to read it for discussion next time. Meanwhile find out everything possible about the mark: Is he valuable, can he be turned, what can he pilfer or copy from the files in his office?
What else had she neglected to hide? I remembered what Miriam had told me, that this ice queen and ball-buster had shed tears at the news of Skerrill’s untimely death, even seeking comfort from the toad Greene. The photograph of Silva as a
student in front of the fountain—had she kept up with her college girlfriends? If she missed art enough to still study it, to keep her notes, maybe she still corresponded with her fellow art lovers.
I checked the urge to light up—leaving the trace aroma of Old Gold in Silva’s flat would be pretty stupid—and got back to work. Now the real search was under way. I returned to the bedroom closet. When it comes to the sentimental, most people are predictable; they like to hoard mementos, keepsakes, and special objects in one place. A cedar-lined hope chest, the back of a dresser drawer, an orange crate on a closet shelf. What was dear to Silva—the notes, outlines, and papers of her budding career as an art historian—was in that closet; maybe a trinket or letter from Skerrill had been cached there, too.
But no. I riffled book pages, shook notebooks by their spines, studied every folder tab. I scrutinized the souvenirs Silva kept in a shoebox (ticket stubs from art museums, dinner menus, and concert programs). Every object related to Silva’s time abroad and her study of art. I squandered precious minutes on this useless exhumation before I realized my mistake: like all people who lead double lives, Silva had learned to separate her worlds, to conceal her divergent identities. If she ever opened a line between them, she first took every precaution possible. She wouldn’t keep anything she’d gotten from Logan Skerrill, because she knew no matter how well she hid it, someone like me would turn it up. Besides, Skerrill was too smart to leave a written record of what he’d been doing for H & H. As much as I hated to admit it, he’d done an awful slick job of tricking Terrance and me into believing he was a homo during our search of his boarding house.
If there was anything to find, Silva had left it. And it would be right out in the open. No cryptography, nothing complex, just an ordinary veneer to pry off. Of course, that’s what made this type of deception so effective—if you didn’t know which object held the secret, you couldn’t crack it. Was it the grocery list, the notice from a bookshop that the title she had ordered had arrived? My search was methodical and slow—too slow, in fact. By four o’clock, I’d only gotten through the kitchen and half of the living room. I needed to leave, pronto—hell, I should have left fifteen minutes earlier. What if Silva got a headache and left work? What if she was getting her hair set at four-thirty and wanted to come home first? Reluctantly, I put down the stack of bills I’d been reading and left the flat. No one saw me going down the stairs, and I walked three blocks down the alley before returning to H Street.
The Dead Don't Bleed: A Novel Page 16