“How come I don’t have a boyfriend, ya mean?” Forcing a grin.
She liked the joke, it loosened her up. I kept up the patter, the dopey jive a joe like Andy Weldon thought was smooth.
Back at her first-floor flat—galley kitchen, parlor, and two twin beds jammed into a narrow, windowless room—Jean offered to make tea, shyly explaining that her absent roommate was a teetotaler who didn’t allow booze in the place. I said sure, tea’d be great, and put on a record while she was in the kitchen. Art Kassel and His Kassels-In-The-Air Orchestra, delivering scratchy, middle-of-the-road standards. A far cry from the bebop, the Kansas City sound, some called it, that I’d discovered earlier that year at the Lotus Club, where Dexter Pierce and his boys really ripped it up during their last sets. But this was Andy Weldon’s night, not mine.
The tea was awful, weak, with leaves floating in it, but I didn’t take more than a sip. Asked Jean to dance as Gloria Hart crooned her way through “I’ll Be Around,” held her close, and leaned in for a kiss. Not much of a move, but tonight I was a stray, damn lucky to have a bowl of cream and a warm corner to sleep in. Reminding myself of that raw fact helped me shut my eyes to Jean’s bulbous eyes and the scent of tea and sweet and sour sauce on her lips.
Trying to distract myself didn’t help. Andy got through the roll in the hay, afterward he cooed lovey-dovey things to Jean til she fell asleep, but slumber eluded him. Me, that is. Andy Weldon was bushed, for sure, but Ellis Voigt couldn’t drive Georgette Newhurst from his consciousness. For all her relief that her son was alive, a terrible question had to be haunting her: Who did this to my son, who did this?
CHAPTER 10
ICREPT OUT OF JEAN’S FLAT AT DAWN, WASHING UP QUIETLY AND CHANGING my socks with the pair I’d bought at the dime store. Tossed the garish bow tie and dirty socks into her trash, looked guiltily at her purse on the kitchen table. But I didn’t go through it, didn’t take her money. Sunday was going to be rough on just two dollars, but at least my sleepless night had given me an idea on how to cadge some moolah.
I was hungry, but the knot in my stomach was stronger. Forced myself to concentrate. I’d gone plenty of nights without sleep in the past, but adrenaline and willpower weren’t enough to keep me sharp. Before I scored some scratch, I needed a pick-me-up, something that could carry me another twenty-four hours. I hopped a bus that would get me close to the Eastern Market. The diners nearby attracted musicians finally calling it quits after all-nighters. A lot of jazzbos hadn’t slept a wink on a Saturday night since they were kids, but not all stayed awake by habit alone. Sure, I could get what I needed from a Peoples Drug Store, but rumor was, musicians usually had something you couldn’t get at the counter.
I walked into Carol’s De-Lite, a Formica and chrome palace as sleek as a ’38 Packard. Quick eyescan, took in the counter stools, appraised the booths. All full. Booth 1: three Marines in rumpled uniforms, slurping coffee. Booth 2: a morose-looking couple silently eating eggs. Booth 3, in the corner: four joes—three Negroes, one white—in suits, ties loosened, laughing. I beelined for the stool closest to Booth 3, swiveled so I could eavesdrop. Thought I recognized the white guy—he looked like Dexter Pierce’s clarinetist, but I wasn’t sure. Ordered coffee and biscuits and gravy, downed a glass of ice water in one long draught. Though I’d not drunk much alcohol the night before, my head throbbed, as if the lie I’d told Jean about the steel plate in my head was true. Lighting up, I slid a discarded section of the Times-Herald my way and read the listing of that morning’s church services as I strained to overhear the musicians …
“… shee-it, man, you know that ain’t true,” one of the Negroes, a stocky man, was saying, in a faint drawl marking him as a native of Baltimore.
“Oh no? Lemme tell you sometin’, friend, you don’t know nuttin!” Another Negro.
“Was you there? C’mon now, don’t be shy …”
The clink and rattle of my arriving coffee cup and silverware interrupted their patter. Nothing yet to flag them as Dexter Pierce’s boys. Couldn’t risk a look from my stool, they’d notice me staring. Sipped my coffee, attacked the gray, steaming mound of biscuits and bits of sausage with my fork, tried not to eat too fast.
“ … started out with Muggsy Spainer, then came east,” the white fellow was saying.
They had a desultory argument about Beiderbecke. None had ever heard him—they were too young—so they debated by proxy, citing trumpeters or trombonists they’d played with who had once gigged with the pianist from the Sioux City Six or the clarinetist from the Rhythm Jugglers, on and on, their breakfast finished, their last cigarettes almost stubbed, my platter just about cleaned. As the biscuits and gravy settled in a lump in my stomach, I could feel the weariness bear down, weighting my eyelids. I nodded at the counterman for another cup of joe, my third.
Then gold.
“ … naw, we’ll be playin’ cornball least ’nother year, D.C. ain’t ready for it.”
I perked up: “it” was bebop, the sound Dexter Pierce saved for his final sets, after the squares had jitterbugged themselves out and toddled home. When the white fellow casually mentioned he’d asked out the coat check girl, a half-Asian, half-white beauty with glossy black hair that fell to her waist, I had my opening—she worked at the Lotus, a place I knew well.
“Great gig last night,” I ventured, turning on my stool.
No response, just blank looks.
“How’d you like our ‘Crazy Rhythm’?” the clarinetist asked.
“You never played it,” I guessed. All the times I’d been to the Lotus, I’d never heard it.
One of the Negroes, a slender man with almond eyes and a mustache, laughed. “Dex hates that number.”
I hid my relief behind a sip of coffee.
“You play?” This from the heavyset Negro, who was flipping his Zippo lid open and shut. Whoosh—clink, whoosh—clink.
“Nope, just a fan. For what’s it worth, you guys are the best in D.C.”
Not worth much, my lame compliment. The clarinetist said thanks, the thin Negro yawned.
“Awright gents, ready?” asked the third Negro, who’d been observing me the whole time. He looked alert and restless, like a man who had had a full night’s sleep and a pot of coffee. Only there wasn’t a cup in front of him.
He’s my man, I thought. As the musicians stood, I fixed him with a level gaze and said, “You fellas know where I could find something a cut above a bennie?”
My bluntness bothered the clarinetist, who dropped his gaze to the dollar bills they’d dropped on the tab. The two Negroes who’d spoken to me exchanged quick looks. For an agonizing moment, the fourth man wordlessly returned my stare. Finally he asked, “Rough night?”
I nodded, and left it at that. Anyone could see how haggard I was.
“Just one?”
Another nod.
A smile broke his cool, aloof expression. “Well, for a fan, I guess we can help out.” He slipped his hand into his trousers pocket, came out with a slim silver pillbox. With a practiced gesture, he flipped the lid, swept up a red capsule, and extended his hand, palming me as I stood.
“Thanks a million.”
“Sure, see you at the Lotus.” He pocketed his pillbox, they strode to the front, took their hats down from the pegboard, and left. I drained the last of my coffee and downed the red pill with a long drink of water. The counterman, a lugubrious fellow with a face as creased as last week’s paper, suddenly smiled—he’d witnessed the exchange.
“Morning, sunshine,” he croaked, laughing with a wheeze.
I left him a fifty-cent tip on my $1.25 tab. That left me just two-bits, but running into Dex Pierce’s boys and scoring an amphetamine was an awful good omen, and I wanted to keep my lucky streak alive.
NEXT STOP, THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH AT TENTH AND G, service at 8:30. A lovely morning, pale blue sky dotted with stray clouds, light breeze, temperature in the low seventies. I passed a bakery, its door open, the scent of warm bread and rolls
wafting out. A news agent perched in his shack nodded as I passed, a young mother pushing a stroller smiled; I smiled back. I loved Sunday mornings in Washington, loved to walk the streets aimlessly, studying homes and buildings. There was a height limit in the city, something to do with protecting the sight lines of the Washington Monument, so unlike my hometown of Chicago, where architectural wonder was found way up high, the gold flake of the Carbon and Carbide Building, say, or the top stories stacked like wedding cakes downtown. Here in D.C. the beauty was right there in front of you. The redstone arch of a mansion, the copper trim of a mansard roof, a frieze set along a roofline. My first year, I must have logged a hundred miles of Sunday morning strolls, finding tiny manicured parks and overgrown cemeteries. On Sixteenth Street I’d stopped to read some of the names of the city’s fallen from the Great War, a maple tree planted and a copper medallion set in a stone for each of the dead. Wandered along the banks of the canal in Georgetown, gazed through embassy gates, passed through the alley slums that honeycomb the city.
A torrent of memories overtook me, random images rushing by like flotsam in a flood. The way a girl I slept with years ago had unhooked her brassiere. The stray cat I’d briefly adopted and named Franklin D. The crooked smile of a fellow naval officer, now dead. The pill was kicking in, for sure. I didn’t much use Benzedrine, didn’t like the jagged come-down that left your nerve ends flickering and crackling like a cut electrical wire, but I didn’t have much choice. And sweet Jesus, this was no ordinary bennie! I felt like a boxer at the first bell, a coiled spring, a bull thundering into the arena. Every sense was heightened. My eyes burned, I had X-ray vision, I could see through walls. How I was going to sit still through several church services that morning, I had no idea, but I did know this: nothing, and no one, not the Russians, not the F.B.I., were going to get in my way. Superman could sleep in, D.C. was all mine that morning.
The First Congregational Church was a fortress of God, stone and brick piled into towers, arches, and entablatures. The entrance, at the top of steep steps, had three keystone-shaped portals (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?). The greeter, an elegant matron in a peach chiffon dress and pearls, gave me an eyeover as jaundiced as a beat cop’s. Rumpled clothes, no tie, unshaven, trouble? As her eyebrow arched, I smiled brightly and said I hoped she could excuse my appearance, that I was from out of town, that my work for the War Department had kept me up all night, and that the “First” came highly recommended. Bingo—she gave me a warm welcome.
I appraised the pews before I let the usher seat me. I’d timed my arrival just before the service’s start so I could maneuver myself into a sparsely seated pew in the rear. My appearance helped; the usher sat me in the second-to-last bench. As the organ prelude’s last chord resonated and a deacon began the call to worship, I had just five pew mates: on my right, two parents and their young son; on my left, an elderly couple. The boy kept staring at me until his mother rebuked him with a hoarse whisper.
I hadn’t set foot in a church in years. My folks were lukewarm Lutherans, a cut or two above the Easter-Christmas crowd. I vaguely remembered hymns, Bible readings, a sermon. Hoped the Congregationalists were no different, especially when it came to using a basket to collect the offering. As the good people of the First followed their Sunday routine, I mumbled my way through the Lord’s Prayer, joined in the responses, belted out hymns. Seemed like we were up and down twenty times, never seated for more than five minutes before the next round of singing. With that red-hot bennie coursing through my blood, I was thankful for any movement. Was all I could do to keep from drumming my fingers on the well-worn bench or jimmying my leg. The kid sensed my energy and stole looks whenever he thought his mother wouldn’t notice.
Until the sermon, the minister, a flabby young man with a florid face and thinning hair, hadn’t struck me as much of a preacher. He spoke softly, almost disinterestedly. Turned out he was saving himself for the main event. Is God Still Angry? was the theme of his sermon. His voice picking up tempo and volume, he recounted, with story after story, the absolute wretchedness of mankind. Babies abandoned in dark cold alleys, husbands who beat their wives to death, con artists who bilked the old out of their last dime. What the Japs did to our boys at Bataan, the camps the Germans killed the Jews in. We the people joined together to defeat this evil in Europe, victory is at hand in the Pacific, neighbors love one another here at home; and yet. And yet. God is still angry. His left hand outstretched, the minister left his lectern and swept toward us, leaning over the first step of the apse like a tree straining to stay rooted in a windstorm. Sin abounds, temptations flourish, we dance on the borders of Hell. “Having done good in the world, we believe we are inherently good!” he shouted. “That we have no need of God, that we can free ourselves from the fear that is actually love, His love, which keeps at bay the demon’s lions, the greedy hungry lions that see their prey.”
The congregation was enrapt, even the little boy in my pew, when the vision of Kenny Newhurst tied to the chair blinded my consciousness. His tear-streaked face contorted with pain, now facing me, his lips miraculously murmuring the minister’s last words: God is still angry, waiting, waiting endlessly for you to act righteously.
“S’the bennie, jes the bennie,” I told myself, not realizing I’d whispered the words. The elderly couple in my pew looked over, annoyed. I bit down on my lip, I pressed my hands under my legs, I clenched my eyes shut. Had to pull myself together, had to calm down—the offering was next. That basket was my salvation, but only if I could steady my hands and steel my nerves. Please God, please help me now, I swear I’ll make things right.
The sermon ended, we prayed, the deacon said a few words about sharing. The choir sang as the ushers came down the aisles. I took an envelope from the rack on the pew in front of me and sealed up my last quarter.
The father on my right put in a dollar, his son took the basket and scooted toward me. He was doing just fine, both hands gripping the basket’s edges, but as he let go, I gave the basket a good jostle on the bottom with my left hand, almost upending it. “Peter, be careful!” his mother exclaimed. Everyone was staring at the mortified little boy, here was my split-second chance. I pressed my offering into the basket and palmed several bills, crumpling them into a wad. I passed the basket to the old woman with my left hand, leaving my right hand visible, the fingers slanted downward, to keep the bills out of sight. As the elderly couple and the ushers watched the father berate his son, I slipped the bills into my pocket.
I wanted to beat a hasty exit after the service ended, but Peter’s father, a serious-looking fellow with wire rim glasses, said, “Pardon me, sir, my son has something to tell you.”
I forced a smile at him and the boy, on whose shoulders his hands rested. Peter, wearing a blue suit just like his father’s, looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry for being clumsy, sir,” he said, his voice quavering.
I blinked away Kenny Newhurst’s face and said, “It’s okay, it was just an accident, you didn’t do anything wrong.” I wished the family well and strode away, telling myself, ordering myself, to stay composed, to squint away the tears, the pitiful, desperate tears about to trace, at long last, the shame of my sins, my wretchedness.
Bright sunshine blinded me on the church steps. I blinked it away, and the welling tears. At the diner, I’d picked two more church services to attend, but now I resolved to make amends. I’d go to Providence Hospital and tell all to the Newhursts, beg for their forgiveness. What that might do to the investigation, well, I’d just have to let the chips fall where they would.
But I didn’t get a chance. Because as I started down the stone steps to Tenth Street, I noticed a man across the street drop the newspaper he was reading into a trash basket and start down the sidewalk in the same direction I was going.
CHAPTER 11
SO MUCH FOR MY ZIGGING AND ZAGGING. THE RUSSIANS HAD FOUND ME. The N.K.V.D. liked to bird-dog, so the shadow was driving me toward the guys with guns. Getting caug
ht here was bad news, it meant they’d had plenty of time to spread a dragnet around the church. I was walking north, but a team had to be positioned south, didn’t matter if I switched directions. Could have been worse, I reminded myself—they could have tracked me to Jean’s apartment while I was still there. If I ducked back into the church, the Russians would simply tighten the net and wait me out. A block away, at the corner of H Street, I saw a cop in a prowl car, writing a report, his window down.
If not for the pill I’d popped, I probably wouldn’t have done what I did. But the idea seized me like an electrical shock, set me tingling, lit up my face. Picking up my pace, I veered toward the prowl car, sneaking looks over my shoulder at my shadow, who pretended not to notice. I let him close the gap until the cop was within earshot, still engrossed in his report.
“Stop it!” I shouted, wheeling around and pointing my finger at my shadow. “Turn off your transmitter!”
He stopped dead, unable to hide his surprise. The cop perked up.
I rushed toward my shadow, a youngish man of average build and soft features: chubby cheeks, snub nose, full lips. “Turn it off, goddamn you, turn it off!” I shouted, shaking my fist.
He took a backward step, involuntarily looked around. The N.K.V.D.’s men had to be close, had to be observing, but they stayed out of sight.
“Are—are you talking to me?” he asked.
“You know I am, you know I am! I told you to stop!” I twitched and jerked my head, like a swimmer trying to eject water from his ear.
“Say, what is this?” the cop said loudly. He’d left his car and was striding toward us, his billy clenched in his right hand. Passersby had stopped to watch, chattering excitedly.
“Make him stop!” I challenged the cop.
“Easy, easy.” He raised the club, cupped it in his left hand, glared at me.
I mumbled under my breath, then buttoned up. Couldn’t overdo it, couldn’t be a ham.
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