‘All right,’ I said, pretending to memorize an address I already knew. I handed the scrap of paper back to Wicker. He lit it with his cigarette lighter and let it burn to cinders in the ashtray on the table.
‘Report back to me when you’re done,’ Wicker said. ‘Then Mr Shera can have you back. He’s quite annoyed with me.’
Wicker gave me money for the taxi and I signed the receipt, which read ‘reimbursement for office supplies’.
As I hurried back across the street the absurdity of all this crashed down upon me. I felt like a double agent. What if Wicker found out that I was working for Sergeant Royal too? It wouldn’t impress him that I was keeping as much from Royal as I could. My career, such as it was, would be over. No matter how fascinating Hughes’ death investigation was, after I reported to Wicker I would hide myself in the Registry for the rest of the war. And after I fed the same information to Royal I would refuse any more contact with him.
At lunchtime I wrapped myself in an old raincoat I kept at the office in case I was surprised by the weather. I pulled a straw fedora over my eyes. Too bad I didn’t have my sunglasses, I thought, then my transformation into spy and snitch would be complete!
The taxi let me off on the corner across the street from my destination on New Hampshire. Paul Hughes’ secret life took place in a nondescript four-story building with the words ‘Worth’s Residential Hotel’ stenciled in black on a window on the ground floor. I circled the building, noting two doors and a fire escape – three entrances or exits for spies or lovers.
An ugly clanging signaled my entry into the building. The hall was clean but needed painting and the carpet was worn. A long sofa slipcovered in a fake tapestry print was the only furniture in the hall. The impressions of many pairs of buttocks showed on the cushions.
A window in the wall near me slid open, startling me.
A woman in a blue denim coverall and a grubby do-rag leaned out of it.
‘What can I do for you, missy?’ she said. ‘We just rent to men here and we’re full.’
‘I’m not looking for a room,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for my brother.’
‘Sure you are,’ she said. ‘You can tell me the truth. You got a boyfriend lives here?’
‘No, really,’ I said. ‘I’m Mary Anderson. I’m looking for my brother. I haven’t heard from him in ages. I was in town and thought I’d come by. Is he here?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, unfolding a rectangle of chewing gum and popping it into her mouth. ‘It’s not my job to keep track of all these men. But Mr Anderson, he’s not here much. Mostly on the weekends.’
‘He lives in Fredericksburg,’ I said. ‘He rented this room to use when he’s in town on business. The hotels are always full.’
‘Well,’ she said, chewing vigorously on her gum, ‘I don’t know if he’s here, but you’re welcome to go on up and see. Second floor at the end of the hall, room Two G.’
The second-floor hallway was much like the lobby. Clean, but in need of paint and new carpeting. I knocked on the door of room 2G, expecting no answer and getting none. I peered through the keyhole but saw nothing but the footboard of an iron bed and a tattered chenille bedspread.
I jiggled the doorknob and knocked again, just for appearances’ sake.
Back downstairs I approached the custodian again.
I leaned into her window.
‘Ma’am,’ I said.
She was curled up in an armchair listening to the radio. ‘What?’ she said, without rising.
‘Could I ask you just one more question?’
Sighing, she uncoiled herself and approached the window.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
I leaned over until our heads were close together.
‘You see, my best friend Claire is engaged to my brother. She’s heard so little from him recently that, well, she wondered if he’s seeing someone here? Have you seen him with a girl?’
‘Now, you know, the men here aren’t supposed to bring in girls. But if they’re quiet, and slip me a dollar, I don’t mind. What they do is none of my business.’
I took the hint, found one of Wicker’s dollars in my pocketbook and handed it over to her. She stuck it in her coverall pocket.
‘You tell your friend that Mr Anderson has a girlfriend.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Course, I ain’t blind. When he’s here she comes over. All covered up in a trench coat and an ugly black scarf with yellow flowers, no matter what the weather is.’
‘What does she look like?’
‘Can’t tell. I told you, she wears a scarf. She’s got a nice figure.’
‘Poor Claire!’
‘Mr Anderson has other friends who visit him, too.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, couple men, couple women. But they don’t come as often as the girlfriend.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell me? Would you recognize the friends if you saw them?’
‘Nah,’ she said. ‘All the men who live here got friends who drop by. I don’t pay no attention to them. Like I said, if they’re quiet so my boss doesn’t hear about it I don’t care.’
Major Wicker had arranged for us to meet outside of OSS at a drug store fountain across the street from George Washington University. It was a student hang-out, but students these days were older and often wearing military uniforms.
Stopping inside the door I removed my scarf and tucked it in my raincoat pocket. Then I spotted Wicker at the last booth. He was wearing civilian clothes, a double-breasted suit that disguised his girth. As I walked toward him I was sure the bulge under his armpit was his sidearm. The man must sleep with it.
Wicker stood up as I slid into the booth opposite him.
‘How did it go?’ he asked, before he even finished sitting down again.
‘That depends on what you expected,’ I said.
The soda jerk, who must have been at least sixty, appeared at our table with his pad and pencil.
‘What would you two like for lunch today?’ he asked.
‘Got hamburgers?’ Wicker asked.
‘No sir.’
‘OK,’ Wicker said. ‘Two hot dogs with mustard, catsup and onions. French fries. And coffee, black.’
‘I’ll have a bowl of chilli with saltines and a glass of milk,’ I said.
‘Bowl of red,’ the jerk said to himself as he wrote down my order.
‘Tell me what happened,’ Wicker said once the waiter had left the table.
‘The custodian said that Anderson, or rather Hughes, did have a girlfriend. A woman who visited him alone and often.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘She was always bundled up, hair under a scarf, dark glasses,’ I answered. ‘The custodian said that Hughes had other visitors too, men and women, but that they came less frequently than the woman she figured was his girlfriend.’
The soda jerk arrived with our food. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until he set down the bowl of steaming chilli. There wasn’t much meat in it but it tasted delicious to me, full of red beans and onions.
‘You must want to know what is going on,’ Wicker said.
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘In no way did Hughes’ job at OSS require him to acquire another identity and rent a room,’ Wicker said. ‘So he either wanted to conduct a romantic affair secretly …’ Wicker didn’t finish the sentence. But I knew what had to follow. Hughes could have been spying for another country. That’s why Wicker had me find out what files Hughes was reading in the Reading Room. And why his personnel file had been moved to the restricted ‘L’ room.
The soda jerk cleared our table and we both ordered coffee. When he brought our cups to us he gave me one lump of sugar, one less than I would have liked to have, but I was grateful for it.
Wicker leaned over the cracked Formica and pursed his lips, looking at me as though he wanted to confide in me. And I wanted him to. At this point in time I was so desperately cur
ious about Hughes I’d almost have been willing to lose my job to find out what the hell was going on. I took a chance and asked him a question.
‘Do you think Paul Hughes was compromising OSS security?’ I asked. ‘And that he was murdered because of it?’
‘I don’t know yet, Mrs Pearlie, but if I could find this girlfriend of his I believe she could answer many of our questions.’
As I waited in line for the bus an old Ford Woody drove up and stopped at the curb next to me.
‘Lady,’ the man at the wheel called out to me, ‘want a ride?’ It was common for drivers to pick up government employees at bus stops and offer rides, but I didn’t want to go with a stranger alone. I leaned over to look inside the narrow window. It was Sergeant Royal with his fedora pulled down low over his face.
I opened the car door.
‘I didn’t think you’d want me to pick you up here in a police vehicle, so I drove my old bucket. Have a seat.’
When I saw the stained upholstery I hesitated to sit down.
‘It’s as clean as I can get it,’ Royal said. ‘There’s a towel in back if you want to cover the seat with that.’ I did. After I retrieved the towel and spread it on the seat I sat down and closed the door. Rusty hinges made a scraping sound.
Royal pulled away from the curb and out into the usual traffic jam.
‘I bought this car in 1931,’ he said. ‘I was fixing to buy a new one a year ago but then the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor and all the car companies were switched over to military vehicles. I’m just hoping I can keep this bucket running a while longer.’
We crawled north on 21st Street toward my boarding house, driving through the middle of the George Washington University campus, which made me think of Joe. Teaching Slavic languages there had been his cover story.
‘Tell me,’ Royal said.
I told him exactly what I had told Wicker. The absurdity of briefing both men with the same information on the same day did not escape me. I couldn’t keep this up, despite my curiosity about Hughes. I was just asking for OSS to find out about my association with Royal and send me packing.
‘We need to find the girlfriend,’ Royal said, stopping at the intersection of ‘I’ Street to allow a gaggle of government workers to cross the street.
‘You need to find her,’ I said. ‘I’m done.’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You want the answers to Hughes’ murder as badly as I do.’
‘I’ll just have to read about it in the papers,’ I said.
Royal turned down a side street and parked in front of a vacant lot.
‘What’s this?’ I said.
Royal turned to me. ‘You remember I said I’d share information with you, too?’
‘Yes,’ I said. What had he found?
Royal pulled something out of his pocket and dropped it in my lap. It was a man’s wallet. ‘This isn’t Hughes’ wallet!’ I said.
‘Look inside,’ he said.
I did. It was Hughes’ wallet all right. Hughes’ driver’s license was inside, as was his draft card (stamped ‘II-A’ – exempted because of necessary civilian occupation), a couple of receipts and four dollars.
‘Where did you find it?’ I asked, handing the wallet back to Royal.
‘A park ranger who oversees the Tidal Basin area called me this morning. I’d left a business card with him. Someone found the wallet under a park bench and turned it in.’
‘You’re kidding!’ I said. ‘It’s been there all this time?’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It would have been found by now, as busy as the Tidal Basin area is.’ He turned the thin beige wallet over and over in his hands. ‘The person who murdered Hughes planted it there. Recently. Like in the last couple of days.’
My skin crawled just thinking about the killer wandering around the Tidal Basin until no one was in sight, then dropping the wallet.
‘I don’t understand why,’ I said.
‘He’s hoping that we’ll think Hughes simply lost the wallet. Which would support the notion that Hughes’ death was an accident, that he hadn’t been deliberately stripped of his identification. I’m sure my superiors will buy into that explanation. After I’ve dropped you off I’ll take the wallet to my precinct, where it will join the other evidence in Hughes’ closed file.’
I couldn’t take my eyes off the wallet. ‘What are you going to do now?’ I asked.
‘Try to convince you to help me find Hughes’ girlfriend.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t get further involved in this. I just can’t.’
Royal didn’t argue with me. He stopped at Washington Square so I could walk to ‘Two Trees’. By the time I got inside the door my nerves were jangling. I sank into the hall chair. Henry heard me and came out of the lounge.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked. ‘You look done in.’
I was done, all right.
‘I’m OK, just tired.’
He shrugged and went back inside the lounge.
I dragged myself upstairs and made myself a very strong Martini. I trusted Royal not to involve me now, no matter what happened. I might be in the clear.
After another Martini I went downstairs to dinner, where we all feasted on Dellaphine’s chicken pot pie. It was one of my favorite meals even before rationing began.
Milt wasn’t at dinner. I hesitated to ask about him, but Phoebe volunteered.
‘I’m so pleased,’ she said. ‘Milt went out with some friends from college who heard he was in town. They’re going to have drinks and dinner at the Metro Club. One of his friends’ father is a member.’
‘That’s great news,’ Henry said. ‘He should get back out into the real world. Lots of veterans have bad war wounds. He needs to snap out of it.’
‘I don’t think it’s that easy,’ I said. ‘None of us can understand what he’s been through.’
‘It’s a first step,’ Phoebe said. And indeed Phoebe herself looked much better. She had some color in her cheeks and ate most of her dinner.
I didn’t spend the evening in the lounge with the others. I was worn out and felt a headache under way. It felt to me as if the weather was changing. Another spring thunderstorm must be on its way.
The next morning I was the last to get to the dining room, only to see Milt there, working his way through a plate of eggs and bacon. He was dressed and shaved.
‘Want me to butter your toast, dear?’ Phoebe asked.
‘No thanks, I need to learn to do it myself,’ Milt said. Using the side of the plate to brace one edge of the toast, he gently spread it with butter. Once the toast slid off the plate, but he just smiled. ‘Butter side up,’ he said, replacing the toast on the plate and finishing the job.
I wondered what had happened to cheer Milt up. I found out when he followed me into the hall and insisted on helping me with my coat. ‘This is something else I need to learn to do,’ he said. ‘Must impress the ladies!’ Then he whispered into my ear. ‘I got my papers yesterday,’ he said. ‘I got an honorable discharge! I don’t know why, but I am not protesting.’
‘I’m so glad, Milt,’ I said.
‘Now I have a chance to make something of my life,’ he said. ‘I’ll pick up a Purple Heart at a pawn shop to make Henry happy.’
I felt like a new person at work. Now that I was relieved of the pressure of Royal’s threat to report me to OSS I felt like my old self. I applied myself with vigor to summarizing a twenty-page report on the movements of a fleet of Nazi tanks at a base in France. At night the young French woman who cleaned the nearby German barracks climbed over the ten-foot wire fence to record the serial numbers and odometer readings of all the tanks parked there. Much of the report was in French, but it was basic enough that my high school French was adequate to the task.
Tired of the OSS cafeteria I’d brought a cheese and pickle sandwich and a thermos of milk from home so I could spend my lunch hour outside in the warm spring air. I leaned my back up against a tall sugar maple drooping with clusters of
chartreuse flowers and gazed south-east toward the Tidal Basin. I couldn’t see it, but I could picture it surrounded by cherry trees in full leaf. Such irony, that it was one of the prettiest parts of the District due to a gift from the Japanese government. True, that gift was made over thirty years ago, but still. I wondered if after the war the United States would ever have cordial relations with Japan again. It seemed doubtful to me.
I was watching the horizon darken over the Potomac, a harbinger of that spring thunderstorm I suspected was on its way, when Clark Leach spoke to me.
‘I’m intruding on your lunch hour,’ he said.
‘It’s OK,’ I answered, climbing to my feet and smoothing out my skirt.
‘We might want to go on inside,’ Clark said. ‘It looks like rain.’
‘I think it won’t arrive until later tonight. We can use the rain,’ I said, thinking of the corn and peas sprouting in the Victory Garden out in back of ‘Two Trees’.
Clark walked me back to my building. He took my arm as we started up the stone steps. Again I detected no romantic spark between us. So odd that he sought out my company this way. The thought that he was vetting me for some kind of promotion or mission at OSS crossed my mind again. I hoped I was making the right impression. And thank God Sergeant Royal and I had ended our partnership without compromising me!
‘Can you come out with me tonight?’ Clark asked. ‘Rose and I have someone we’d like you to meet. He’s a friend of ours. The plan is to meet him at Rose’s and then go out to eat somewhere. Sadie’s working tonight, but Peggy might come.’
‘I don’t usually go out on a week night, Clark,’ I said.
‘We won’t be out late. After dinner I’ll take you home. And we’ll leave early, directly from here, if that’s OK. Our friend wants to meet you.’
On the off chance that Clark was testing me I decided I should say yes.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Meet you on the usual corner.’
‘Clark, you missed the turn,’ I said.
‘No I didn’t.’
‘You just passed Rose and Sadie’s apartment building.’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I must have misspoken. We’re going to meet our friend at his place. He lives just a little way further along.’
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