Rip the Angels from Heaven

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Rip the Angels from Heaven Page 10

by David Krugler


  “Lieutenant Voigt’s here, what a surprise,” Slater said after he entered. He stayed directly behind me as I turned around to face Paslett again.

  “Yeah, and we’re busy, so you’ll need to make an appointment,” Paslett said smoothly. “I can see you after, oh, I don’t know, Labor Day. Maybe.”

  I watched Slater’s reflection in the window. His expression didn’t change.

  “You’ll wanna hear this, Commander, believe you me,” Slater said.

  Paslett lit a Chesterfield, took a long drag. “I doubt that.”

  “You know, Commander, I’m here as a courtesy to O.N.I., but I’m happy to tell the director you wouldn’t even give me five minutes of your time.”

  A courtesy. That actually meant the Bureau needed something from Paslett, and John Edgar had sent Slater to get it without saying pretty please.

  “Tell him I gave you two minutes.” Paslett made a show of looking at his watch. “Starting right now.”

  “Uh-uh, not with him here.” I watched Slater’s reflection dip his chin at me.

  Slater wanted to tell Paslett all about Philip Greene, no doubt about it. To save his skin, Greene was trying to convince the Bureau that I’d framed him, that I was the real killer of Lieutenant Logan Skerrill, the turncoat officer whose death I’d investigated while undercover at the clipping service. Having failed to bait me on Saturday at the diner with Greene’s accusation, Slater was casting a line at Paslett. Getting the commander to doubt my loyalty, my honesty—that’s what the Bureau was after.

  “All right.” The commander leveled his gaze at me. “Lieutenant Voigt, you’re dismissed.”

  “Yessir,” I answered, snapping off a salute. Why’s he caving? I started to worry.

  Then Paslett said, “Send Lieutenant Daley in, Voigt.”

  “Yessir,” I repeated, ignoring Slater as I passed him. I wouldn’t be present to hear what Slater had to say, but my partner would be, and he’d tell me everything after Slater left.

  “MISS ME?”

  Terrance Daley peered at me through a haze of cigarette smoke. “No.” Downturned lips, piercing gray-green eyes. On another man, you’d call it a scowl—from him, that look meant good to see you, pal. I’d seen Daley scowl for real—he could rattle Medusa with that look.

  “Thanks for keeping my desk clear,” I said. During my lengthy exile on the nutter line, my partner had stacked, tossed, dropped, shoved, or flung folders, envelopes, memos, newspapers, grease-blotted hamburger wraps, carbon paper, pamphlets, magazines, and badly folded maps onto my desk, which faced his own in our cubbyhole of an office. Atop one pile, a misshapen clay ashtray with a mountain of butts rested at a precarious angle—a few stubs had already tumbled, like doomed mountain climbers, down the sloping mess. I reached for the ashtray—“Don’t touch that!” Terrance shouted.

  “Why not?”

  “M’trying to get a’hundred butts into it.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Marcia made it in school. Said it could hold a’hundred cigarettes, easy.”

  I studied the rough-hewn piece, a thumbprint visible in the glazed clay. “She’s got talent,” I said.

  “Thanks. Have fun this weekend?”

  “Fun, that’s one word for it. Listen, the commander needs you pronto.”

  “What’s up?” He stood, stubbed his smoke on the edge of my desk, and carefully set the butt atop the mountain. Miraculously, it stayed.

  “Our buddy from the Bureau is back. Paslett wants you there.”

  “Slater.” He practically spit the name out. “He’s getting to be a real pain in the ass.”

  “Getting to be?”

  “Called for me three times last week. Funny how I couldn’t ever find the time to ring him back.” He grinned, spreading his palms over the mess on my desk.

  “Yeah, funny. Listen carefully, will you? He’s got it in for me.”

  “Don’t worry, partner, I’ll get it all.” He patted my shoulder, checked to see he had his cigarettes, and left.

  I sat down in his chair and lit up. Give myself up to the N.K.V.D.—had I picked up a death wish during my weekend on the run? Paslett was right, the Russians would smell a plant, they wouldn’t just take my word. It was one thing to say, to think I could take whatever they dished out, but another thing to take it for real. No man knows what he’ll say to stop the pain, unless he’s endured a bout of torture already. And I’d never been put to the test.

  But what choice did we have? Keep me deskbound, bunking here? We needed to identify the spy from New Mexico, and we couldn’t do that with me in protective custody. I was the only one who’d heard his voice, and I’d seen him. Slim, young, dark-haired, cool, confident. I could quote every word he’d uttered to Himmel that night at the Automat. Whatever was being built down in the desert in New Mexico, we had to keep the Russians from finding out about it. The Germans were kaput, the Japs just about; but the Russians were our next enemy—and anyone who believed that Stalin and Company wanted to get along with the United States after the war was a fool.

  Paslett had to convince Groves to let us find his spy; I had to convince Shovel-face I was all the way on the Red side of the board. If the Russians eased off, if I could collar the spy, drop him right into Groves’s lap, then it wouldn’t matter what had happened to Himmel. We wouldn’t have to worry about him. Would take a bit of work, but I could bring Paslett around on that subject. Not without that spy, though—I absolutely, positively had to have that S.O.B. tied down and singing loud and long.

  I yelped—my cigarette had burned to my fingers. I threw the butt to the floor, ground it out; the telephone rang.

  “Voigt here.”

  “Come on down,” my partner said.

  Slater was gone, Daley was sitting in the chair I’d used. After Paslett put me at ease, I pulled a chair from the corner and sat next to my partner.

  “Hey bruiser, how’s it hangin’?” Terrance said, grinning.

  “Slater thinks you’re a killer,” Paslett chuckled. Banter was good, joking was welcome—they were having none of Philip Greene’s accusation.

  “You tell him I rob banks too?” I asked.

  “Funny. But Slater’s making some real noise,” the commander said.

  I said, “The Bureau’s gotta cover up their part, sir—they’re just trying to get outta the spotlight.”

  Lieutenant (j.g.) Logan Skerrill, the man Slater believed I’d killed, had served with us in O.N.I. A real whiz kid, he’d turned out to be a Benedict Arnold, a Red who’d been working for the Russians. Only that hadn’t been exciting enough for him, so, like some barrel-chested comic book hero, he’d fashioned himself into a double agent. Presented himself to the Bureau, fessed up to being a spy—and promptly volunteered to be a mole to make things right. How he knew the Bureau would say yes instead of arresting him, we could only guess, but he’d pulled it off. Until he got killed in an alley, that is. Daley and I had investigated the murder—that’s when I’d gone undercover to work for Himmel, who’d run Skerrill on the Russians’ string. When Himmel found out what his golden goose was doing, he ordered the hit. Despite the proof that Philip Greene was the gunman—hell, I’d found the .38 that had killed Skerrill at Greene’s flat—Slater wanted to believe Greene’s claim that I’d killed Skerrill and planted the gun. Putting the blame on me cooled the heat on the Bureau, which hadn’t bothered to tell anyone it was secretly running a compromised naval intelligence officer as its mole.

  “Where were you that night, Voigt?” Paslett said suddenly, staring straight at me. Meaning the night Skerrill was killed.

  “With my gal, sir.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “We could ask her, sir.”

  “The same broad who got you your spec?”

  “Yessir.” Trying to keep a blank look on my face. That “broad,” Lavinia Burling—Liv, always Liv to me—hadn’t gotten me my spec. I’d earned it by contacting her while I was undercover, a reckless, stupid stunt that pu
lled Liv smack into the middle of my investigation. Slater had hauled her in, he’d interrogated her, even though she’d known nothing. She’d left Washington as soon as the Bureau cut her loose.

  “Know where she is?”

  “Nossir.”

  Paslett looked at Daley. “How soon could you track her down?”

  My partner shifted uneasily in his chair. “Sir, m’sure we could find her pronto, but is that a good idea?”

  The commander gestured at him to continue.

  “If we alibi Voigt, we’re just playing into the Bureau’s hand, sir. It tells ’em we think they’re right that Voigt is dirty. Whatever alibi we tell ’em, they’re gonna hammer it to pieces. They don’t just wanna take down Voigt, sir—goddamned Bureau wants to take us all down. Truman hates Hoover—everybody knows it—but if the Bureau can smear O.N.I., O.S.S., and everyone else, then ol’ Harry’s got no choice but to keep Hoover on.”

  Paslett was listening intently, I liked that; then he started nodding, I liked that even more.

  “Besides,” my partner finished with a smile, “Voigt’s no killer, else he woulda shot me this morning for what I did to his desk.”

  I plastered on a grin. My partner had seen right through the Bureau’s play, and he’d brought Paslett around. Slater must have laid it on thick, knowing that Paslett was obsessed with Reds, and the ploy had almost worked. But Daley was dead-on right. Coming up with my alibi would only tell the Bureau, and the entire intelligence establishment, that O.N.I. was running scared, that we didn’t know if we had another spy in our ranks or not.

  “All right, forget finding that broad. I’m gonna see if the admiral”—Rear Admiral Leo Thebaud, O.N.I.’s director—“can stir up a shit storm for the Bureau as our way of thanking Agent Slater for his visit. Besides,” he went on, now looking just at Daley, “there’s something else I need you to do.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Find a safe place for Filbert Donniker to stay the next few nights. Voigt will explain why.”

  CHAPTER 15

  WHILE COMMANDER PASLETT TALKED TO ADMIRAL THEBAUD, DALEY and I returned to our office. I told him about my weekend, starting with what had happened to Kenny and why Donniker had had to go on the lam.

  “Why the hell didn’t you call me?” he asked when I finished.

  For an answer, I pointed to the ashtray his daughter had made for him. He nodded his understanding. He had a son, too, and anyone could easily find out where his kids went to school, could easily come after them.

  “These goddamned Russians think they own this city! Why can’t we just round ’em up and send ’em to Siberia?”

  I didn’t reply because he already knew the reason why: the Japs. As long as they were still fighting, we needed the Russians in the war. The deportation of a boatload of Reds, as much as they deserved it, wasn’t going to happen. Besides, Shovel-face and his partner were sure to carry diplomatic passports labeling them “Second Assistant to the Directorate of Foreign Trade Missions” or some such nonsense.

  “All right, our orders are to find Donniker a safe place, let’s do it.”

  “Um, about that—you’re the one who’s gonna find him a place.”

  He shot me his trademark scowl, and as many times as I’d seen it, I still had to suppress a flinch.

  “See, the thing is, just before Slater showed up, the commander and I were discussing—well, he might have another job for me, is all.”

  “Another job. Undercover, again.”

  “I don’t know, he didn’t say.”

  My answer was weak, I was holding back, Daley knew it. We worked well together, had for years, but the murder of Logan Skerrill and my assignment to infiltrate the communist spy ring had strained our partnership but good. I owed him a better explanation than I’d given—hell, I owed him a lot more than that—but until I knew what Paslett wanted to do, I had to hold back.

  “Listen, what’s going on here, it’s not—”

  “Better go see the commander,” the scowl said.

  Felt just like a fight with a girlfriend, but I knew better than to try to placate him. He was steamed, he had every right to be, and nothing I could say could cool him down. Better to tuck my tail and scoot, so I did.

  Paslett was bent over one of his file drawers when I entered at his command. He told me to sit.

  “Daley working on that safe house for Donniker?” he asked, still poring over his folders, his voice muffled.

  “Yessir.”

  “Good, good,” he answered.

  I longed to light up but held off, pressing my hands against the top of my thighs and forcing them to stay there. I felt rank, was a mess, could smell my own stink. Hadn’t showered or shaved in two days, hadn’t washed in more than twenty-four hours.

  “All right, okay,” Paslett muttered to himself, sliding the file drawer shut with a thud. He returned to his desk, empty-handed, and lit a Chesterfield.

  I eagerly tapped the cigarette from my packet and lit up.

  “Spoke to the director,” he said.

  “Yessir.” And waited.

  “Ever read Westbrook Pegler?”

  “Occasionally, sir.” Pegler was an op-ed writer for the Times-Herald.

  “He’s gonna leak it the Bureau’s coddling a commie killer.”

  I took a drag, thought about that. Pegler must have had a falling-out with the Bureau. Hoover favored his type, liked to ladle them scoops as they held out their paws and begged. But Pegler must now owe the O.N.I., because Admiral Thebaud wouldn’t let Paslett go to the press without a guarantee that the commie’s victim, a naval intelligence officer, wouldn’t be identified as a Russian spy. The Bureau would push back hard, but it wouldn’t leak that detail about the victim either, because then Pegler would reveal that the Bureau had been running him as a double agent. For very different reasons, the O.N.I. and the Bureau wanted to keep Lieutenant Logan Skerrill’s treason a secret. Still, using a journalist to poke Hoover in the eye seemed awful risky to me. Intelligence agencies treated newspapermen like pets, either stray cats to throw rocks at or lap dogs to nuzzle; but animals, no matter how tame, are unpredictable, and they can bite. I just had to trust that Thebaud and Paslett could trust Pegler. As long as the ink-slinger delivered, the Bureau was off my back, if only briefly.

  “That’s great, sir,” I said.

  “About what you proposed, before our pal Slater showed up. You sure you wanna try it?”

  Got no choice, do I? “Yessir, I do.”

  “All right, here’s what we’re gonna do. First I want you to write up a Form 47”—an affidavit—“saying you know all the risks.” Translation: I had to sign an advance death warrant, should things go wrong.

  “Yessir, I understand.”

  “Good. Then I want a brief with your objectives and methods.” Meaning the cover story I’d feed to Shovel-face, how I’d stay in contact, everything right down to how many aspirin I’d need if the Russians decided to test my tale with a little pain.

  “Yessir, you’ll have it this afternoon.”

  “Get to it, I’ll call Groves.”

  “Sir, a question.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Can I tell Daley what I’m doing?”

  He thought for a moment. “No,” he said firmly. “Around here, only you and me are gonna know about this.”

  WHICH MADE FOR A TENSE DAY, AFTER I STOPPED OFF AT THE SUNDRIES counter in the lobby to buy cigarettes. Daley looked up at me but said nothing as I sat down with a blank Form 47 at the typewriter we shared. He had the telephone cradled to his ear, smoke untwining from a cigarette, making calls to find Donniker an out-of-way room—O.N.I. had arrangements with a number of trusted (and well-paid) hoteliers and landlords to provide quick-notice accommodations, no questions asked. I tuned out—typing a statement about the possibility of my death, at age twenty-five, took an awful lot of focus. How should it begin? The following is a testament that I, the undersigned, understand … When, in the course of human
events, it becomes necessary for one man to … To Whom It May Concern … I decided to skip the preamble and get right to it. Put it all down, not worry about grammar; straight, no chaser. That I was going undercover, that my “treason” was a front to earn the trust of N.K.V.D. agents, that my tasks were to identify the scientist I’d seen meeting with Henry Himmel and to convince the Russians that this scientist, their spy, had killed Himmel. And that I “fully and willingly appreciate any and all risks to myself as a consequence of this operation.” I typed slowly, carefully. The motion of the Underwood’s keys, snapping forward to strike the paper with a metallic thud, suddenly struck me as violent. My pop was a printer, back in Chicago, and from him I’d picked up some of the trade’s surprisingly rough lingo. Margins were slugs, a line that went too far was a bleed; shop tools included scorchers, shavers, and chase trucks. Jesus, why was I thinking about that stuff now? I rolled the Form 47 out of the typewriter, signed it without proofing, and turned to a much harder job: my brief for Paslett. He was a stickler for detailed, precise briefs, especially when it came to “Opers,” Navy shorthand for operations.

  To avoid further questioning from Paslett, I didn’t mention the confab I’d had with Shovel-face and his partner the night before they found and took Kenny Newhurst. The commander would demand to know how they’d contacted me, why I’d gone, and why for fuck’s sake (a phrase he used sparingly and ostentatiously, like Christmas crystal) I hadn’t told him about the meeting. If all went well, no one would ever have to know about that meeting.

  I worked through the morning and into the afternoon on my brief. Daley was in and out of our office frequently, our exchanges limited to the workaday: where a file was, or a certain form. He was waiting for me to tell him what Paslett was having me do. But telling him I couldn’t tell him would only anger him more. The scowl was bad enough, but the smolder was worse, much worse.

  PASLETT ORDERED ME TO REWRITE THE BRIEF THREE TIMES, WHICH KEPT us both late, close to 10:00P.M. Every change he wanted, each addition, was true-blue, and I wasn’t bent at all about the extra work. It was my neck being stretched out, and Paslett had a jeweler’s eye for planning. Despite the hazards I was facing, my excitement grew as I retyped the final version, Daley long gone, a gooseneck lamp shining like a spotlight on the Underwood. Because the commander wouldn’t stay all night to rework the “Opers” unless he had talked to Groves—I hoped.

 

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