Rip the Angels from Heaven

by David Krugler

  “Must be lonely, traveling by yourself,” I said. Translation: Are there any Russians here in Santa Fe?

  “It can be, but I’m meeting interesting people. And before I go home, I’m going to see my sister once more.” I’m here alone, to see you—I’ll report to them after I leave Santa Fe.

  So I only had to deal with Mara at the moment—and Latham’s shadows.

  “What are your plans for the afternoon?” I asked.

  “Thought I’d look for some souvenirs to take home.”

  “Would you be so kind as to let me tag along? There’s a special lady I’d like to buy a bracelet like yours for.” I reached and gently turned the silver bracelet around her wrist, letting my forefinger trace across her veins.

  “Your gal?” Eyebrows arched, hint of a smile.

  “My mother. For the moment, I’m single.”

  She laughed. “Such a thoughtful boy. It would be my pleasure if you joined me, Ellis.”

  “Wonderful.”

  I left the change on the bar to cover Mara’s root beer and a tip. The barmaid gave us a knowing look as we said so long. She knew a pickup when she saw one—was she buying this one? Or had it looked forced, would she be calling Latham the moment Mara and I left the bar? Take it easy, I told myself. I had no reason to suspect the barmaid. I knew I had shadows, but the less I worried about them, the more natural I’d look.

  We strolled, we chatted. Mara donned a white hat with a wide, curving brim that shaded her face. I tilted my officer’s cap against the sun’s glare. Hot, but bearable—a sticky July day in Chicago was worse. A cloudless sky so blue, so beautiful, no photographer or painter could capture it. Santa Fe didn’t look like a Western town, but what did I know? Movies and comic books had filled my head with clichés. No cowboys here, no cows, no brawl spilling out of a saloon’s swinging doors. Instead, two-story adobe buildings with recessed verandas. Shops, mostly. Hardware, groceries, clothing, hats. Under the shade of awnings and porches, men sitting on benches, chatting, pausing to watch us stroll by. Passersby, too, women with children, an elderly couple walking slowly, elbows linked. Some said hello, we hello’d back. With the sun almost directly overhead, Mara and I barely cast a silhouette. Where are my shadows? I couldn’t stop wondering. Every hat-brimmed face was suspect, even though we were likely being watched from behind. I stole close looks at everyone we passed, to see if their gaze wandered over our shoulders to someone else, but Latham’s tails knew to stay well behind us. The city was small enough, I realized, that we could also be watched from the window of the hotel on the block.

  I distracted myself by telling Mara about my mother, who worked at a jeweler’s in Chicago. How she’d started making her own jewelry, bracelets and earrings. Mara listened attentively, kept me talking by asking questions. Stringing me along, keeping me chatty, no doubt hoping for a slip, an admission, something she could tell the Russians after she returned from Santa Fe. But for once, the truth couldn’t hurt me—my folks and brother Eddie knew nothing about my treason, my spying. They were proud of Lieutenant (j.g.) Ellis Voigt, U.S.N., as their letters made clear, telling me how everyone in the neighborhood was always asking how I was doing. Of all the terrible, and deserved, troubles that would fall like bricks on me if I was exposed as a spy, the crushing of my family’s love and respect for me was the most dreaded. Maybe that’s why I was fighting so hard to free myself from the Russians’ grip without confessing—to protect my family. Or maybe that was yet another lie I told myself to justify what I was doing. At the moment, no matter; the mission was the mission, and to succeed I couldn’t make a single mistake in how I handled Mara.

  She found the shop, we cooed over the wares as the Indian woman nodded wordlessly.

  “I’m sure your mother will love it,” Mara said of the bracelet I picked out.

  She would. The piece featured a silver filigree so delicate it looked like spun thread. “S’lovely, for sure,” I said.

  “Are you in any particular hurry?” Mara asked after we left the shop.

  I made a show of checking my watch. “Got some time yet.”

  She smiled. “Then you’ve got time to walk me back to my hotel, yes?”

  Yes. I saw her to her room, I accepted her offer to come in. She didn’t ask me to sit. Instead, she walked over, her eyes locked on mine, and gracefully pivoted, turning her back to me and taking my hands to place them on the hem of her dress, on her thighs damp with sweat from our walk in the sun.

  “Help me out of this?”

  Yes, yes. I gently pulled the dress, my fingers tracing the line of her panties and her stomach. She shivered, pressed against my groin; I pressed back. Then whispered in her ear.

  “Assume the room’s bugged, everything’s gotta sound natural.”

  “Mmmmhmmm,” lustily, bringing my hands up to her breasts. Neither of us spoke as we undressed each other, still standing, embracing after every stitch of clothing and our shoes lay haphazardly on the floor. Mara’s kiss was long and deep, sticky-sweet with the root beer she’d drunk—that kiss, more than the slow traverse of her right hand round my hip, my thigh, inching closer to my desire—made my legs shaky.

  She led me to the bed, parted her legs. Joined together, I leaned to press my lips to her ear, feeling her nipples high on my chest.

  “Every word covered,” I murmured, and she offered a slow, audible exhale of pleasure. I responded in kind, we eased into our rhythm. The spread fell to the floor, a bed board tick-ticked. So easy to go on, to stop whispering, to let every utterance, gasp, moan come naturally. Focus, focus! I ordered myself.

  “They’re arranging a lineup,” I said, my mouth locked on her ear. Our lovemaking continued. A minute, or two, or more, passed.

  Suddenly Mara raised her head, nipped my earlobe, tugged me to her lips. “When?”

  After a moment, “Soon.”

  “Not too soon!” Translation: You’ve got to get the schematic before you identify him, you’ve got to make contact before the lineup.

  “No, no, not yet!” Understood, I’ll have the schematic before he’s locked up tight.

  “So good, so good …” This’ll make the Russians happy.

  “Yes, yes, yes …”

  Mara clenched me, her nails pressed into my biceps, and her urgent cry brought forth our climaxes.

  We separated. I rolled onto my back. Stared at the stucco ceiling, not speaking, listening to our breathing, our exhales slowing. Finally, I said the words I’d carefully put together in my head:

  “A fine way to spend the afternoon, Elizabeth.”

  “Yes, very much so,” Mara said.

  “I hope you won’t consider me rude, but I’ve got—”

  “To get going, I know.”

  I got out of the bed, lit a cigarette, passed it to Mara. Lit another for myself, started dressing.

  “I’m glad neither of us are saying it,” Mara said after a deep drag on the Lucky.

  “That I’ll call?”

  A wicked smile. “Or we should do it again soon?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why spoil a fine moment with clichés?” I forced a grin, playing along, but my gaze gave away my anxiety. Don’t overdo it.

  She sensed the tension and nodded, just once. Neither of us spoke again until I’d finished dressing and lacing up my shoes, the bed creaking as I sat and then rose. Mara shifted to lean on the pillows against the headboard. Didn’t pull the sheet over her, her shapely legs crossed insouciantly at the ankles, the light overhead catching the sheen on her skin.

  “Will you do me a favor, Ellis?”

  “A’course.”

  “Tell the bellboy to bring up ice and lemonade.”

  “Sure. Anything else?”

  “Leave me your cigarettes, please? I’m fresh out.”

  I started to hand her the packet, but she shook her head. Pointing to the pad of hotel stationery on the desk, she made a scribbling motion.

  For a split second, confusion, then I caught her drift
. She needed to bring proof to the Russians that she’d seen me. I wrote Kilroy was here on the pad, tore off the sheet, folded it into a square, and tucked it into the packet. The Russians had plenty of samples of my handwriting, and using the hotel stationery proved I’d been here.

  Mara nodded approvingly as I brought the packet over to her.

  “I hope you have a nice last visit with your sister,” I said.

  “Thanks.” She stubbed her cigarette. “So long, Ellis.”

  “So long, Elizabeth.” And with that I left, not looking back, squaring my shoulders and coming out of the room, the cock of the walk, not quite strutting but trying to look awful pleased with myself in case Latham’s shadows were watching. In the lobby, I told the bellboy to take up the ice and lemonade. Bought a coke for myself, drank it greedily on the walk to the jeep.

  I hoped the drive back up wouldn’t be as tough as the drive down, because I had plenty to think about. That bit with the cigarettes and note: Mara had been awful smooth. And the way she’d played along from the get-go at the bar—fine tradecraft, too. Maybe I’d underestimated her. Just because I’d switched the Mickey Finn into her drink the night she’d come to my apartment didn’t make her an amateur. Flash thought: What if she and the Russians had planned her screwup with the drugging of my drink all along? Maybe she’d wanted me to catch on, maybe the Russians wanted me to sell her short. She’d fronted “Elizabeth” effortlessly, like a stage actor, without hesitation, delivering all her lines effortlessly, never sounding stilted.

  Which was good, real good. I couldn’t trust Mara as far as I could throw her, but now my fate was in her hands. Latham’s boys would be sweeping her up any minute, hauling her in for interrogation. Her story had to hold up, she had to keep the note I’d written hidden deep in the Lucky packet I’d given her, and she had to sell but good the nooner we’d just had.

  And so did I. Thank God I didn’t know who was going to be in my audience when I returned to Site Y—if I had known, I might have just let the jeep miss one of those hairpin turns on the road back.

  CHAPTER 28

  IARRIVED AT LATHAM’S OFFICE PROMPTLY AT 1400. THE COLONEL AND Dahlen weren’t there. A typist asked my name, her face tightened for a second when she heard it. Told me they were expecting me in Room 1410A, right down the hall. I knocked, thinking about the typist’s expression. I knew Latham was going to confront me about my encounter, but did he also have something unexpected waiting for me?

  Did he ever. Special Agent Clayton Slater of the F.B.I. was seated next to the colonel at a long wooden table. Dahlen was there, also a steno, a young woman with glasses and brown hair. Four unfriendly faces staring at me, Slater’s hatred glittering in his eyes.

  “Sit,” Latham practically hissed.

  No mistaking where, just one metal folding chair on the other side of the table. Flash thought: Groves had said he had a meeting off base. Who with—Slater? Had Slater come from D.C. on a plane that Groves had gone to meet? All the time I’d been in Santa Fe, Slater must have been briefing Groves and Latham, laying out his case against me, all the suspicions, the innuendo. Considering how much Latham already didn’t trust me, Slater must have sounded awful persuasive. What if the Bureau had turned up something on me in Chicago? Lying my way out of this trap was going to be like picking my way across a minefield. Worse—death wouldn’t be instant on a wrong step.

  The door behind me opened and shut. I stole a glance at the reflection in the steno’s glasses: two MPs, burly, helmeted, armed. They stood at parade rest, eyes forward.

  “Your friend’s already in custody—”

  “Agent Slater’s told us quite a story—”

  “Don’t waste our time with lies, Voigt—”

  Quite a barrage, that—one, two, three. In rapid fire, Dahlen, Latham, Slater. The steno’s fingers danced over her machine. Click-click, click-click-click-click.

  Get cocky? Play dumb? Blow my stack? Cook up a cover? Instinct said no, all three were pros; and I was sure Slater had told them about my modus operandi when I’d been undercover in D.C. and first tangled with the Bureau. All feints they’d parry, cutting me at every thrust, too. My best move, ignore the third-degree staging and act like I was on the same side of the table.

  “So who is she?” I asked matter-of-factly.

  Dahlen and Latham had already reloaded, itching to fire—my question threw them. Why wasn’t I protesting, throwing a fit? But Slater didn’t blink, fixed me with the patented G-man stare, lips pressed as straight as a ruler, brow furrowed, eyes bearing down.

  “Who’s her contact, how does she find them?”

  I ignored Slater and looked straight at Dahlen. “The round heel, who is she and why didn’t you bring her in earlier?”

  “The better question is why did she find you, Lieutenant Voigt?” Latham asked.

  Slater’s expression tightened. The colonel might think he was in control, but even acknowledging my question gave me an opening.

  “Now look here,” I said quickly, before Slater could jump in. “I went for lunch after my briefing with McKibbin, stumbled into an easy nooner, took it. If that’s against the rules, how come you didn’t tell me that before you pushed me into a jeep and sent me down the trail?”

  The steno blushed but didn’t miss a word. I hoped I wasn’t laying the cad act on too thick.

  “You don’t actually expect us to believe you don’t know her?” Latham was getting hot under the collar.

  Slater shot him a look. Colonel or not, he was fouling up the interrogation.

  “She’s telling all, Voigt, so drop the act,” Slater said. “You’re not leaving this—”

  I cut him off to address Latham. “Colonel, I know the drill—if you meet a girl, and one thing leads to another, s’long as you don’t tell her what you do, it’s A-okay. And I sure as hell didn’t give this gal my life story. So why are we sitting here talking about that when we should be doing the lineup?”

  “Forget the lineup, Voigt.”—“That’s not why we’re here.” Latham and Slater, talking at the same time. Showed they’d expected me to change the subject. My tight spot had just gotten tighter.

  “Delphine Moreno,” Slater said.

  Delphine Moreno. How long since I’d heard her full name? Since her death, countless hours of memories and what-ifs, but names aren’t needed in that realm. Besides, I’d always called her Delphi. My oracle, we’d joked. Just kids, we’d borrowed from the Greeks, like so many doomed do, not understanding tragedy. No one does until it hits.

  I said nothing, waited.

  “Her father, Rosario, was a field organizer for the Communist Party in Chicago.”

  I didn’t respond. The day Delphine died was beautiful, sunny, warm. A strike for steelworkers’ rights could be dangerous, we’d sensed that, we’d known the police would be protecting Republic Steel’s property, but we were seventeen years old, and no one that age ever dies. It was a strike, a protest, peaceful and right—how could anything bad happen? We didn’t even hear the first shots. Strikers running, rushing past us—the stampede had frightened us, but we’d stayed on our feet.

  “You knew who Rosario was, you knew what he did,” Slater continued in a monotone. “We have affidavits.”

  My God, what have they. Delphine’s last words, uttered when we saw a fallen striker. A question unfinished, a sentence incomplete, a life snuffed out. The bullet spun her around, dropped her in a blink. She didn’t die instantly, but the ground and the grass knew she was theirs, the thump of her body sickening, an unnatural embrace, a horror in my ears all the surrounding noise couldn’t silence.

  “‘God only knows how many hours he spent with the Morenos’ … ‘He and that girl were two peas in a pod, let me tell you’ … ‘They put up handbills for the protest, sure, all over the neighborhood and by school.’” Dahlen, reading from the affidavits the F.B.I. agent had just mentioned.

  What did my former classmates know about Delphine and me? They’d been a blur to us, faceless fig
ures shuffling around us, mumbling—first love, real love, does that, it banishes those around you to the background. They’d not understood us then, what could they possibly remember now to tell a persistent Bureau questioner?

  “How bad does it look that you never mentioned Rosario Moreno when you put in for O.N.I. service?” A statement, not a question, from Latham.

  “For once, Commander Paslett’s paying attention,” Slater chimed in. “Going over all your cases, looking for irregularities.”

  “‘Voigt was really broken up when his girl got killed’ … ‘Walked around like a zombie for weeks.’” Dahlen again, reading the affidavits like a script.

  Do you think I could be a playwright? Delphine’s question the week before she was murdered. A lovely spring day, we were at the lakefront, lying in the grass, looking at the blue sky, eating candy. A’course. S’that what you wanna do? A smile. To start. Of all her remembered words, those two still sting, still carry the hurt of loss, injustice, emptiness. To start. Who’d stolen that start, all the brimming promise of a seventeen-year-old girl with her life ahead of her? Stooge cops doing the bosses’ bidding.

  “That’s when it happened,” Slater said. “Moreno had been feeding you the commie line for months, you’d been lapping it up—he was the heroic father of your puppy love. Three of you could hardly wait to mix it up with the cops at Republic Steel, that was your first taste of agitation and revolution. And when that recklessness, that stupidity got the girl killed, you and Rosario didn’t blame yourselves—Reds never take responsibility for the troubles they cause. He recruited you, got you into the secret side of the Party, all before you even joined the Navy.”