I crept over to the body and searched Himmel’s pockets until I found a sealed envelope. Ripped it open, pulled out a complicated schematic that made no sense. No matter, had to be the item Boy Genius had passed to Himmel at the Automat. I pocketed it—thankfully, there was no bloodstain on the envelope, just on my shirt. A small caliber wound, upward into the heart, the bleeding had been mostly internal. I hadn’t wanted a mess, didn’t want to leave a trace of what I’d done. Guess I’d learned a lesson or two from killing Logan Skerrill.
CHAPTER 38
WHAT HAPPENED WAS, I FELL IN LOVE WITH DELPHINE. SIXTEEN years old, both of us, just starting our junior year at Chicago’s Lakeview High in the fall of 1935. Delphine: raven-haired, slender, black eyes, dusky skin, five feet tall maybe, second generation Sicilian. Intensely quiet, like she had plenty to say but no one to say it to, only a girlfriend or two. Not like the other pretty girls, who roamed the halls in chattering packs, parting the between-bells crowd like fire engines—no, Delphine drifted alone from class to lunchroom to yard with a flickering smile. I first noticed it in English class. After mentally tracing the curve of her calf into the folds of her pleated skirt, after noting her tiny waist and the swell of her hips, her breasts, the brightness in her almond-shaped eyes—all that beauty rushing into my impressionable sixteen-year-old head, but it was her smile that stuck and took over my thoughts. Was she, like me, thinking about how stupid our classmates were? How dull and washed-out our teachers were? What observations, what daydreams, teased out that smile? And why didn’t I have the goddamned nerve to drift alongside her in the corridor and ask her? Then:
“Do you think he’s weak, like he says?” Asking me, casting her gaze at Mr. Jurgensen, our English teacher, as class ended one October morning.
“Who?” Practically struck dumb.
“Macbeth.” Watching me closely, no smile now. Wondering, Is he just like the others?
“No,” I answered firmly.
“Then what is he?”
“In love.”
“Convince me.”
So I did, walking her to lunch, jabbering about the play and how dense Jurgensen was, about how he didn’t get that Macbeth wasn’t as weak as he seemed, that maybe he wasn’t being manipulated, maybe he was plotting, scheming, letting murder into his mind because he was in love with Lady Macbeth.
“Funny how that happens,” Delphine said.
“What?”
“That the woman takes the blame.”
I’d never heard anything like that before, as my face must have shown.
“Don’t believe me, huh? Ask Ophelia.” And with that she stood, picked up her tray, and walked away without a look back. Knowing I was watching, knowing I’d caught her smile, knowing I’d stay up all night re-reading Hamlet, knowing I’d sidle up in the corridor the next morning, bleary-eyed but jazzed, ready with my response.
Every lunch after that day, together. My friends teased me mercilessly; I barely heard them, stopped even seeing them, their faces dull white blobs, one indistinguishable from the other. Maybe that’s what’s best about first love, never to be repeated: everyone around you blurs and falls out of focus, like a Greek chorus, off-stage. Only me and Delphine, bright and vibrant, the sun shining only for us. Disdaining the Rainbow Rink and Riverview Park—roller skates, Shoot-the-Chutes, the Tunnel of Love, they all seemed like two-bit entertainment for kids, yesterday’s news for two sophisticates like us. We went to the Preston-Bradley Theater to see plays staged by the Federal Theater Project; we hung out at a coffee shop where Delphine had befriended a group of regulars, writers for the W.P.A. who collected life stories from Uptown residents. We listened intently as they regaled each other with that day’s “catch,” a game they played, telling tales about the folks they’d interviewed—you had to guess which stories were true, which ones false. They were only a few years older than us, college students forced out of school by the Depression and cub reporters cut by struggling papers, but they were emissaries from another world that appeared, through our teenage eyes, to be carefree, independent, smart.
Delphine and I went to countless movies together, all that fall and into 1936. One Saturday, in the balcony of the Uptown, the first matinee, no one else around, we’d slipped under the “Closed” sign dangling from a velvet rope and snuck up the stairs. Entranced by “The Petrified Forest,” watching Gabrielle clutch Alan as he dies.
“When a woman puts her hands on a man’s back like that in a movie, it means they’re lovers,” Delphine whispered.
“Gabrielle and Alan never slept together,” I whispered back.
“They never got the chance, did they?” Her breath hot in my ear, my hand on her thigh. Both of us knowing the next film didn’t start for forty-five minutes, both of us knowing the ushers wouldn’t come up, not if we were quiet. Mostly quiet.
We knew we’d be together after we graduated, never had to talk about it, didn’t have to make a plan. Delphine was determined to go to college, she wanted to be a professor—not a teacher, a professor—and spend her life teaching students the right way to read Shakespeare, Dos Passos, Thoreau. No money for me to go to school, I hoped I could get on with the W.P.A. and join the coffee shop crew, then come home every night to Delphine. No tuition money for her, either, but at home she needled her pop, Rosario, dropping lines like “After I get my first degree” or “I should give Northwestern another look.” He’d shake his fist at her. “You’re’a not’a gonna go to no college!” She’d give it right back, the two of them yelling. Took me a couple of visits to realize they were play-acting, her pop laying on the thick Italian accent to tease me, Delphine delighting in my discomfort. In truth, Rosario had flawless English—he’d arrived in the States as a young boy—and was studious, well-read. But not bookish, like his daughter, who read for the joy of it. Rosario was an organizer for the Congress of Industrial Organizations, hellbent on putting a union card in the hand of every laborer he could buttonhole outside a factory gate or shop entrance. He read so he could persuade, recruit, build the industrial army. I should have caught on when I scanned the titles of his impressive library. Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist. Lenin, Key Speeches. Marx, Theories of Surplus Value. In Italian, books by Pareto, Gramsci.
Rosario liked me, let Delphine bring me home to dinner. He was a natural-born teacher. Where others argued, he asked. But what is a fair wage, Ellis? Letting me ramble, listening intently, then saying, There’s a book I think you might like to read. Going to his library, pulling the title off the shelf, pressing it into my hands. Not, you must read, nor, I want you to read. Unlike so many believers, whatever their religion, Rosario understood that a change of consciousness could not be imposed, it had to be invited in by the willing. But I do not believe, and never have, that he intended to bring me into the fold, that he wanted me to join the party. At least not before May 30, 1937.
That spring, Rosario served on the leadership committee of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. The Wagner Act had legalized collective bargaining, the steel owners didn’t care. When Republic Steel shut out its workers, the C.I.O. vowed to fight. A picket was scheduled for May 30, Memorial Day; Delphine and I plastered the north side with handbills. Delphine’s mom warned Rosario not to take us, arguing with him. She was not well-read, her people had come from Sicily as contract laborers, but sometimes a peasant’s wisdom is keener than the intellectual’s book-learning.
What a sight! Outside the mill, hundreds of workers amassed, spread out in a field, moving toward Republic’s main gate. Day bright and sunny, warm. Rosario darted back and forth, beckoning to stragglers, urging them to get in line. Delphine and I handed out signs, until they were all gone. Republic Steel vs. The People. The strikers chanted, “Who builds America?,” answering, “We do, we do!”
What we saw as a rally, Republic saw as a siege. In front of the gate, more than one hundred Chicago police stood in a solid line, billy clubs and sidearms already in hand, a fleet of paddy wagons parked close by. Delph
ine and I looked around for Rosario, who was thirty yards or so in front of us, arguing with a police captain. “We’ve got a legal right to peacefully picket,” Rosario shouted, the officer just shaking his head. The chant changed: “Let us through, let us through!” The police shifted, pressing closer—when a striker shook his fist, a patrolman clubbed his forearm and pushed him to the ground.
“They can’t force us out, there’s too many of us,” Delphine shouted to me.
The first shots barely registered, a burst of pops, puffs of smoke, cries of alarm. We were buffeted by workers running away from the police charge. I grabbed Delphine’s hand and turned to run, too, but she yanked me forward.
“C’mon, let’s get Pop before he gets shot.” She saw my doubt, saw my fear. “Mom’ll kill me if I don’t bring him home,” she cracked.
I forced a smile and said, “When you put it like that.”
We pushed forward, but the retreat was pell-mell, everyone running, a stampede. I wanted to lead—I was a foot taller than Delphine, I could see over most heads—but she stayed in front of me, pulling at my hand. We got clipped on the shoulders, we had to zig and zag, but somehow we managed to stay on our feet. A bug-eyed barrel of a man charged at us, I yanked us out of his way just before he knocked us down. Then we were clear, away from others, and in the rush to catch my breath, I didn’t notice a body lying close, not until Delphine spoke.
“My God, what have they—”
I never heard the shot, only saw her head turn suddenly, her chin slumping—she looked like she’d dropped something. Until she collapsed.
THE DOCTOR ROSARIO MANAGED TO FIND TOLD US IT DIDN’T MATTER that twenty minutes had elapsed before he could see to her. She’d died quickly, he said, probably didn’t feel anything. The doctor lied—I watched Delphine die. She sputtered, unable to speak; her breathing rasped, wheezed, rattled; she shook my hand away when I tried to hold it; her eyes fluttered. Did she hear me screaming for help, did she see the tears streaking my face, did she hear me promise everything would be all right?
Not that it mattered. Because Delphine couldn’t hear me when I told Rosario I wanted revenge, that I wanted to help the party destroy the men who arranged for steel workers and a teenage girl to be mown down like rabbits, shot in the back, left to die in dirt. Sure, I hated the cops, but Rosario had taught me they were just stooges, dupes, the hired guns of the men who really mattered, the men who rigged the system to make themselves filthy rich. The men I would make pay, one day.
After the funeral, after the union’s memorial service for the fallen—Delphine and nine men dead—Rosario gave me a street address, had me memorize it. Don’t write anything down, you understand? I responded, Yessir, as if I were a buck private. Three days before my high school graduation, I went to the address, nighttime, knocked. Steel door, plain brick one-story building on an industrial block, no lights. I repeated what Rosario had told me to the man who answered my knock. He let me in, led me wordlessly to a shop floor. No introductions, no preamble—for the next two hours, I sat on a wooden chair under a dim bulb and answered every question imaginable about my upbringing, my family, my education. Three men, sitting just outside the light, faces not visible, just disembodied voices and a hovering cloud of cigarette smoke. If we want to see you again, we’ll let you know, they said. When Rosario didn’t contact me for a week, I was sure I’d failed the test—and I didn’t dare call him. Then, as I sat despondently at the coffee shop early one afternoon, waiting for the W.P.A. crew to come in, a scrap of paper fluttered to the table. I looked up, saw only the back of a man leaving. A different address scribbled down, no time given. Figured I was supposed to arrive at the same hour as my first visit. Two different men gave me a battery of written tests. They barely spoke, handing me sheets of paper. Start . . . Stop . . . Start . . . Stop. After three hours, You can go now. No word about contacting me.
I sweated it out two weeks, June almost gone, my folks on my case to get a job, before the next message found me. Yet another address, different men again. They told me I’d passed, was I ready to go on? Yes, yes, yes, I babbled, expecting they’d now give me my membership card and have me sign a roster—dumb kid! Anyone wants to join the Communist Party of the United States of America, all he has to do is ask, pay his dues, sign his name. But the party sure as hell doesn’t want to record the names of its recruits for industrial and government espionage, doesn’t want any trace of their presence. Just like Rosario had said. Don’t write anything down, understand? So:
“We want you to join the Navy, Ellis.”
“What if the Navy won’t take me?”
“Then you’re of no use to us.”
I enlisted the next morning.
I THOUGHT ROSARIO WOULD BE PROUD, BUT HE WAS A WRECK, HIS clothing disheveled, stubble on his face, the flat a mess, Delphine’s mom nowhere to be seen. The windows were down and the curtains were drawn, air stale, Rosario unwashed—the stench of grief. Leaving, I knew I could never see him again. To keep my party cover, I needed to stay away from known communists, suspected communists, parlor pinks, fellow travelers—anyone who skewed Red. But that wasn’t the only reason. When Rosario finally looked up as I told him what I was doing, I realized he wasn’t listening to a word I was saying. His red-rimmed eyes gave away his thoughts: Why didn’t the bullet hit him? No matter what I did for the party, I could never bring Delphine back to him. Whatever I was about to do, I had to do for myself, by myself. And for Delphine, I resolved as I shut the door on her broken father. I was a month shy of my eighteenth birthday, and I believed I was invincible, indispensable, and destined to be a hero. How different our lives would be if, at eighteen, we could know that we are not, and never will be, any of these things.
CHAPTER 39
I DRAGGED HIMMEL’S BODY TOWARD THE CONSTRUCTION FENCING AND covered it with a tarp I pulled from a stack of lumber. Buttoned up my jacket to hide the bloodstain. Lit a cigarette and walked east on the footpath, trying to keep a leisurely pace. A man out for a stroll, taking the night air. Crossed Route 1, passed under the Southern Railroad tracks, walked into the Tourist Camp in East Potomac Park. Not too many tents this time of year, but I wasn’t the only one enjoying the evening.
“Howdy!” a stocky man called out.
“Evening!” I responded heartily. Duck a stranger’s greeting, he’s sure to remember you.
He was walking a terrier that got awful excited about my pants as I passed, straining at his leash, growling.
“Bruiser! Behave now.” Over his shoulder, “Sorry about that.”
“Not a problem.” Good thing dogs can’t talk; what tales they’d tell.
The Tourist Camp abutted the Potomac, and I’d always noticed a skiff or small boat pulled up on the gravelly shore whenever I drove over the river. I walked up to a rowboat anchored with a cement-filled coffee can.
“Mind if I take her out for a little row?” I called out to an elderly couple sitting in lawn chairs.
“Go right ahead!” the man said cheerfully. “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”
“You bet!”
“You just get in?” his wife asked.
“Yep, just pitched my tent in the back row.”
“Hope you’re not too close to the tracks,” the man said, motioning; “those trains run day and night.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, I’m a heavy sleeper,” I answered with a big grin, spooling the rope round my arm and lifting the anchor into the bow. Pushed off, hopped in, mounted the oars, dipped.
Lovely evening, indeed. Lights twinkling in the Pentagon across the Potomac, waves wriggling like eels, breeze teasing the cherry blossoms. I rowed hard, relishing the strain in my shoulders, the rough feel of the oars in my hands. The exertion eased the sting of my memories and the pain in my hand from Himmel’s bite.
The Reds mostly left me alone my first year in the Navy. Wanted to see how I’d do, wanted to see if I could parlay my training as an Aviation Ordnanceman at the Great Lakes Training Station into an
ensign’s commission. That took studying and plenty of boot-licking, but I got the commission and went to Officer Candidate School. Easy to forget my secret, except I’d been told to read the Lost and Found section of a local paper every day. Lost: young beagle, tan and white spots, answers to Cato, last seen in Hull Park, call Admiral 9356, reward was my summons, my signal to come to a windowless warehouse. I was too dense to get the joke, to see that I was a dog on a leash, cocking an ear at his master’s voice. (Delphine would have seen the metaphor right away.) I thought they were briefings, that what I was telling my handlers about Navy procedures and training was valuable intelligence, but their questions only meant to make me feel important. They were checking up on me, making sure I was advancing toward the true prize: an assignment in the O.N.I., which came not long after Pearl.
Just as a different group of handlers in another city was tracking a bright penny named Logan Skerrill. Funny how we never caught on to one another at the Funhouse. Had to give the Reds credit, they made me feel like I was the only one. Watertight security, every cell sealed off like the compartments of a submarine. By the time I wised up, finally grasped what Rosario had known all along—nothing we did could ever bring Delphine back—it was too late to get out. The Reds had recorded every “briefing,” they had photographed me passing copies of documents from Paslett’s files to my courier in Washington, an American whom I only knew as Michael. It was Michael who warned me, who immediately saw through my request to lie low for a while.
The Dead Don't Bleed: A Novel Page 30