Rip the Angels from Heaven

by David Krugler

  But Groves hadn’t as yet returned his call.

  “What do you think that means, sir?”

  Paslett shrugged. “He’s a busy man. Could just mean he hasn’t had the time. Like I told you before, he’s busy trying to keep O.S.S. out of his hair.”

  “Sir, what if you were to tell him what I’m doing, pretending to be a Russian spy?” As much as I wanted to go to New Mexico, I was hoping—praying—that Paslett said no to this idea.

  “No, no, that’s a bad idea. Just you and me—we’ve gotta be the only two who know what you’re doing.” Translation: If there’s a leak, you die.

  “Then what are we gonna do, sir?”

  “We start the operation, you go under tonight. You do your part, I’ll do mine—I’ll get Groves to say yes.”

  I didn’t answer, just took a deep breath, let it out. Then: “Absolutely, sir.”

  “Good. Dismissed, Voigt, and good luck.”

  CHAPTER 16

  NO ONE TAILED ME, I TRAILED NO SHADOW ON MY BUS RIDE HOME. Jesus H., did I want a drink, I needed bourbon like Crusoe needed fire, but until I got myself cleaned up, I wasn’t fit to bend elbows with fellow humans, not even in a Seventh Street gutbucket slogging nickel beers. Thanks to the coins in my desk drawer, I was able to buy a shortie of bottom-shelf rye from a liquor store near my basement flat. How soon til they pick me up?

  My hand trembled as I dug in my pocket for the door key. If I were the Russians, I’d have two men waiting inside my flat, tipped off that I’d left the Navy Building and was taking the bus. Or would it be a blow from behind as I came down the steps? A car rolling up, a fast snatch? My imagination ran wild, my pulse raced, my breath quickened. Street empty, locust trees casting shadows, whisk of my shoes on the pavement; I could even hear the rye gurgling in my back pocket.

  What I got was nothing I’d imagined. Not even close. What I got was Mara on my steps as I approached, key in hand. Mara, the Southern belle and fellow traveler who’d been dispatched by the Reds to let me take her home the night of my interrogation at the deserted factory.

  “Hello there,” she chirped. “Ah was just leaving a note on your door because you haven’t called, you naughty boy.” Giving me a flirtatious smile.

  “I’ve been busy,” I managed. What the hell is she doing here?

  “Ah figured so.” Still smiling, but giving me an eye sweep her thick lashes couldn’t hide. Her jaw clenched slightly as she noticed my grimy, wrinkled clothes and greasy hair.

  I met her smile and took a quick step closer. “Would you believe I’ve been working undercover in a junkyard?”

  “Why yes, yes Ah would.” She made a show of waving her hand in front of her nose and laughed ever so briefly. Ah ha, ha. A true finishing school touch, that laugh, as perfectly timed as a Bob Hope crack. I wondered if the headmistress had required her charges to practice in front of a mirror. A lady never giggles, or chuckles, and she never, ever guffaws …

  “Hence my disheveledness,” I said.

  “Ah didn’t know that was a word.”

  “‘Hence’ or ‘disheveledness’?”

  “Ah ha, ha.” Smile fading.

  “Well, Mara, you’ve caught me in a less than presentable state, but won’t you come in and have a drink while I freshen up?”

  “Why, that would be lovely, Ellis!”

  Now I got it, I saw why she was there. My solitary return had thrown the Russians. Everything I’d done to evade them over the weekend, and now I was riding the bus home alone? Shovel-face and Company smelled fish, they didn’t like it, they suspected a trap. So they’d rustled up Mara on short notice, and ten to one, she was carrying a Mickey Finn. The Russians were waiting, she’d spike my drink, they’d wait for me to pass out and then move in. Smiling, I slipped past Mara and opened the door.

  She followed me in. I wasn’t much of a housekeeper, but the place was presentable. Motioned for her to sit in the lone upholstered chair while I switched on the tabletop Motorola. Artie Shaw came on, “Many Dreams Ago,” Helen Forrest singing.

  “I’ll build us those drinks, then get cleaned up.”

  “Ah’ll mix the drinks if you like,” Mara said brightly.

  I bet you’d like. “Now, what kind of host would I be if I let you do that?” Big, big smile.

  “Well, if you’re sure, Ellis.”

  “Oh, but I am, I am.”

  She forced a laugh as I kept grinning.

  “Something to read?” I asked.

  “Why, if it’s no trouble.”

  “No trouble.” A few copies of Collier’s and Esquire were on the table by the radio. I grabbed two and brought them over. “Back in a jif.”

  I went into my tiny bathroom, then the kitchen, where I took down two highball glasses, added ice cubes, and poured two fingers of bourbon in each. Fortunately, I had sweet vermouth, to soften the cheap booze. I broke three sleeping capsules I’d taken from the bathroom and dumped the contents into the first drink. Stirred vigorously with a spoon, then brought the glasses into the front room. Mara was sitting upright in the chair, legs primly crossed at the knees, single pleat gray skirt just above her shins. Drab-green short-sleeve shirt, short string of pearls and matching earrings, black pumps with a decorative buckle fashioned as a bow tie.

  She set down the Collier’s and smiled as she accepted the drink with the dissolved sleeping pills.

  “I’m outta gin, hope you like rye,” I said.

  “It’s my father’s favorite drink.”

  I set my drink down on a cork coaster on the end table next to my chair. “Won’t be long, promise,” I told her. Went down the hall to the bedroom, made sure she could hear drawers opening and shutting as I collected a change of clothes. Showered, shaved, and dressed as quickly as possible. How long would it take for the sleeping pills to work? Fifteen minutes, twenty?

  I returned to the front room, feeling like a new man, rubbing my clean-shaven cheeks and relishing the scent of Murray and Lanman’s Florida Water. Bad sign: Mara had barely touched her drink. Good sign (in a fashion): my glass was perfectly centered on its coaster, which meant she had handled it, as I’d left it close to the coaster’s back edge. She’d spiked the drink, now she just had to get me to drink it.

  “May Ah offer a toast?” she asked.

  “A’course.”

  “To new beginnings.” Smiling pertly as she extended her glass.

  I reached to clink glasses, we both sipped. I let the cold liquor touch my lips and run back into the glass.

  “Now may I propose a toast?”

  “Surely.”

  “To many happy returns.”

  We clinked glasses, another lip press for me. If I pulled this off, maybe I’d write a book: Party Tricks That Might Save Your Life Someday. To keep Mara from noticing that my drink wasn’t going down, I set my glass behind the stack of books on the end table. Wasn’t hard to rattle the ice cubes every time I took a “drink” and I kept my hand wrapped around the glass. To speed her along, I spun a tale about the rye we were drinking, how a buddy of mine in the Navy was from Kentucky, how his pop and brothers were master moonshiners, how they had a generations-old recipe, how lucky we were to be drinking it.

  “Why yes, it’s quite, well, unusual,” Mara said gamely.

  “Can you taste that hint of cardamom, just as you finish swallowing?” I asked, raising my glass and feigning a big gulp.

  “Why no, Ah can’t say Ah do …”

  “Try it again—you’ll taste it on the back of your tongue.”

  “Why yes, there it is …” Slurring her words slightly.

  I checked my watch: twelve minutes since I’d sat down. Now she yawned mightily, set her glass down suddenly, frowning. For an instant, her eyelids fluttered.

  “Ellis, do you think—could Ah have a glass of water, please?”

  “Right away.”

  When I returned, she was dead asleep, slumped in the chair, hands resting on her thighs. I drank the water for her and took the glasses, i
ncluding my spiked drink, to the kitchen. Dumped out my glass, rinsed it, poured in the rest of the rye from the bottle. Left Mara in the chair, her breathing deep and rhythmic, and unlocked the front door. Sat back down, raised my glass. “Here’s mud in your eye,” I said to Mara. Took a long, long drink to start my wait, Tommy Dorsey on the radio, working magic with his trombone.

  I was almost done with the rye and Mara was snoring when the door clicked. Lucky me—Shovel-face and his partner entered. No caution, no apprehension, no weapons drawn, came in just like cats at dawn, rolling their shoulders, stepping lightly. They looked around quickly, taking in the scene in a snap.

  “She did not notice you switch drinks?” Shovel-face asked, alert but not alarmed.

  “I didn’t switch drinks,” I said, and left it at that.

  He shrugged, not caring what I’d done. He barked something in Russian at his sidekick, who reached over the chair and grabbed Mara under her arms. He roughly pulled her down the hall and into the bedroom, where I heard her weight thump on my mattress. Shovel-face sat down in the upholstered chair. In short order his partner returned with a chair from the kitchen. Clearly this wasn’t their first visit to my flat.

  Shovel-face said, “Clever of you, Lieutenant.” Ticking his head toward the bedroom.

  Anger swelled within me. The man who had shot Kenny Newhurst was sitting across from me, and I couldn’t do a damn thing. Instead of avenging the boy’s injury, I was playing a game with Russian spies. I could call it an “operation,” I could call it “duty,” I could call it “the national interest,” but no label could banish my frustration at not being able to punish these two N.K.V.D. agents until we knew what they were after.

  When I didn’t respond, Shovel-face shrugged. “You have been avoiding contact, Lieutenant. Why?”

  “I figured you’d drop by eventually.”

  “You were at the Navy Building all day.”

  “Well, yeah, it’s where I work, after all.”

  “What did you do?” Not one for sarcasm, Shovel-face.

  “Caught up on my filing.”

  “With Filbert Donniker?”

  “We didn’t work together today if that’s what you’re asking.”

  His expression tightened. He didn’t like me jumping ahead, I’d have to watch myself.

  “You told him to run.”

  “A’course I did. When I found out the boy from the Automat was missing, I knew we were next.” Paslett had decided bluffing the Russians was a bum move, they’d know we were working an angle. So he’d told me to admit we knew something had happened to Kenny Newhurst without letting them know I’d seen what had happened.

  “What boy?” He was trying to slip me up.

  “There was a boy in the kitchen the night Donniker and I listened to Himmel. Saturday afternoon, I went to talk to him. He hadn’t shown up for his shift at the Automat. So I went to see his mother, she didn’t know where he was. Turns out he’s in the hospital with a gunshot wound.”

  “How did you know where to find him?” Shovel-face asked. He wasn’t fazed at all to learn Kenny was alive.

  “A child goes missing, first thing you do is call the hospitals. Don’t you do that in Russia?”

  He ignored the crack and spoke quickly in Russian to his partner, who nodded, his eyes on me during the exchange. They know I was there, know it was me pounding on the door, know I saved the boy’s life. Why don’t they care?

  “Where is Donniker?”

  Did they know he had arrived safely at the Navy Building that morning? I decided to play dumb. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No.”

  “The Navy is protecting him.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  He made a dismissive noise, a sort of pffft. “Why would you tell him he is in danger?”

  “You want to know where he is, don’t you?”

  “Lieutenant Voigt, how can you be so certain we have gone after this boy from the Automat? Of what value is he? Or this Donniker?”

  He was toying with me, and with a sickening feeling I understood why he wasn’t pressing me to admit I’d come to the factory looking for Kenny. He knew if I really wanted to see him punished for shooting Kenny, I wouldn’t be here—I’d be working with the police to have them arrested.

  I gulped the last of the rye and banged the glass down. “Look, goddammit, why don’t you just come out and ask me already!” Practically hearing Paslett’s voice from that afternoon, when we’d gone through the paces. Get steamed, Voigt! Spit in their eye, let ’em have it.

  Shovel-face said calmly, “We know you didn’t tell us about your equipment. Your headset, the receiver—what is that word you have? Gadget, yes, gadget.” He pronounced the dg as a j.

  The answer I’d expected, because they’d extracted it from Kenny just before they shot him. But I managed to keep up my act.

  “You better not be surprised! No way in hell I was gonna tell you about the rig and how we listened. I had to give Paslett something, didn’t I? Doesn’t change anything I told you about Himmel and his contact, and everything I already told you is how it happened. I met Himmel outside the Automat at seven-thirty, we walked to the Hancock statue, he asked me about the F.B.I., he left walking south around eight, I don’t know what happened to him.”

  “What did the man at the Automat give Himmel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No?”

  “If he picked up something, he musta put in his jacket pocket—I never saw anything.”

  “But you heard everything.”

  “They didn’t talk about a pickup.”

  “You recorded this conversation?”

  “No. Donniker’s rig only had a microphone. It picked up their conversation and sent it by a radio signal to the kitchen—I listened through a headset.”

  “Donniker also heard everything?”

  “No—he couldn’t, he wasn’t close enough.”

  Shovel-face didn’t like that answer. He leaned close and stared straight into my eyes. His dark eyes glinted, I could see the stubble on his chin.

  “How could he not hear if he was close enough to use a microphone?”

  “That’s how it works, it can pick up sound the human ear can’t.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think,” I said defiantly. “Donniker didn’t hear anything, we didn’t record what they said.”

  Shovel-face shot his partner a look. He stood, came around behind me. Paslett and I’d planned for this, he’d convinced me I had to let the Russians believe they were putting the squeeze on me, that no matter what, I couldn’t put the proposition to them, not even if they put a gun to my head. Because they knew I’d spent all afternoon with my C.O., they suspected we’d cooked something up, they were trying to draw it out by scaring the bejesus out of me.

  Which they sure as hell were. “Get the hell outta here,” I blurted. No courage, I was trying to keep my lips from trembling. “And take your little Red pixie—”

  Then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 17

  ICAME TO IN A WINDOWLESS, SMALL, DARK ROOM. COLD WATER WAS thrown onto my face, a lamp was shining on my eyes. Good morning, sunshine, I thought absurdly. Hadn’t a stranger recently said that to me? Or had I heard it in a movie? Had to focus, going loopy wasn’t going to help. Blinked the water away, shook my head, flexed my arms and legs. They’d lashed me to a wooden chair, hands behind my back, ankles to the chair’s front legs.

  “There will be no preamble, Lieutenant—we’re all professionals here, and I see no point in wasting time explaining what will happen if I don’t get complete, truthful answers.” The voice: reedy but precise, unmistakably American, a mid-Atlantic accent. The man speaking: a shadowy, slight figure, seated in a chair about six feet away. With the room’s only light on my face, I couldn’t see his features or even what he was wearing.

  “Agreed,” I said terse
ly. Who was he? Where were Shovel-face and his partner? I sensed others’ presence, the whisk of a shoe sole on tiles, a muted cough. How many, I couldn’t tell. Two, three? Cigarette smoke lingered in the air, but no one was smoking now—they weren’t going to let me see their faces. What did that mean, that they wanted to stay hidden? I shook off the question. No distractions, only unassailable concentration. Funny, when I’d earned a coveted O.N.I. berth, I’d daydreamed myself into stardom, the Melvin Purvis of the Navy. Be careful what you wish for, natch—now I was starring in my own show, on the stage with the spotlight trained on me. Break a leg, Ellis …

  “Why did you decline to tell my colleagues about your surveillance of Henry Himmel and his contact at the Automat?”

  “I was holding that back as insurance.” True.

  “Explain.”

  “I didn’t like being called to an empty factory at night. But I also wanted a reason to be called back.” True.

  “Understood. But withholding information hasn’t made your position any more secure, has it?”

  “Thought you said we’d skip the unnecessary explanations.”

  He laughed, but that didn’t put me at ease. Sadists like feisty prey, makes them feel even more powerful.

  “You said your equipment didn’t record the conversation at the Automat.”

  “It didn’t.” True.

  “Did you hear the entire conversation?”

  “No. I missed the first few minutes while we got set up.” True.

  “Tell me what you did hear.”

  Decision time. So far, telling the truth was easy, the answers couldn’t hurt me. I wasn’t so sure about my next response. Still, I opted for the truth. Most of it.

  “Himmel’s contact is a scientist working on a weapons project in New Mexico. He came to Washington to see Himmel in person. Himmel was upset, he had wanted to use a courier, he didn’t want him to come in person, but the scientist dismissed his concerns, said he was sure he wasn’t followed. Then he said he wanted Himmel to memorize something.”