Crooked

by Austin Grossman

  We went on like that for half an hour. Every four or five blocks he’d stop for a moment. Once he turned left and I hurried to follow. Three more turns and he’d circled the block. It was my first time following anyone, but were all people so suspicious?

  We ducked and dodged through the late-afternoon crowd of gray-suited men and he led me five, then ten, then twenty blocks up Lexington Avenue, past the long, curving Buicks and Chevys of that year, past the elegant young men who’d gotten all those law jobs I’d applied for. I sweated through my shirt in the August heat. Plenty of time to think about what I’d say if he picked me out of the crowd. Should I feign an attack of conscience? Probably not. He was a lawyer and knew perfectly well how to make a circus out of it the following day.

  Any real political operator would have had a private investigator do this. Jack Kennedy would have, Kennedy who was no doubt in the Hamptons while I straggled up Lexington Avenue in an ill-considered gamble for political gain. I already knew I was making a fool of myself. If I could just resolve what exactly Hiss was, at least I’d know which kind of fool.

  Hiss was odd, damn it. His brittle demeanor, his strange, rigid unwillingness to acknowledge a man who obviously knew him well. And now this paranoia. He was under terrible pressure, anyone could see that, but what was its nature? A Soviet contact, a mistress, a hidden illness?

  The shadows were getting longer as the sun went down over the Hudson, the moment when the north–south avenues were half in darkness, and the east–west streets became, briefly, tunnels of golden light. At Seventy-First Street he stopped, his long spindly shadow in front of him. He glanced back once before turning into a side street, and for a moment I was sure he’d seen me. It wouldn’t have been hard; I was puffing, red-faced, and squarely in the middle of the sidewalk. But he missed me or else he covered seeing me extraordinarily well.

  I rushed to the spot where he’d turned and then hesitated, evening pedestrians streaming past me. He could be standing just around the corner, ready to confront me. No way to tell. I nerved myself and stepped into the side street just in time to see Hiss’s tall dark figure turning into a distant doorway. I hurried after him, trying to keep a fixed sense of which door it was.

  It was an unremarkable building, brick, six stories. A sign above the lintel called it THE WEXFORD. I peered in at a tiny lobby: linoleum floor, stairwell, and a dark lift. Apartments or office building? I slipped inside and heard Hiss’s footsteps moving upward and out of reach. Was I really doing this? I had come this far. I pulled my shoes off and gingerly scrambled up the slippery marble steps in my frayed socks, past identical floors of identical hallways, doors receding in the distance. The footsteps stopped on the fifth floor and I stopped on the stairwell beneath, panting. I smelled pencil shavings, mimeograph liquid, old cigarettes. Whatever the mystery was, I was close to it.

  It occurred to me fleetingly and too late that there might be actual danger here. If Chambers was right, there were people in the United States in 1948 who were sworn to a foreign power and ready to act against Americans. What if Hiss really was a secret agent? Would he kill to keep his secrets? He might. He could be executed for treason if caught. Communists were murderers and assassins, everyone knew that. I thought of the Czech foreign minister who had leaped or been pushed from a lavatory window out into the early-morning air, pictured vividly the few agonizing moments before he struck the pale stone streets of Prague.

  I moved up a few more steps to look down the corridor. Hiss had stopped and was opening the last door on the left. It swung shut behind him. I crept close enough to read the number 519 on the door, cheap wood with a frosted-glass window sealing the mystery behind. I could hear Hiss moving around inside. Shuffling papers, typing. What now? The other offices seemed to belong to accountants, notaries, mail-order firms. The fourth floor was the same.

  I walked away and came back and nothing had changed. I could feel in my gut just how bad an idea this was but couldn’t tear myself away now that I was so close. I thought about what I could do if I had proof of treason. Who could ignore me then?

  The phone rang, and I heard Hiss pick up and begin speaking quickly, angrily, like a man at the end of his patience. I was leaning in closer trying to make out the words when he hung up and his footsteps came rapidly toward the door. I froze in embarrassment, stood there in the bare hallway as the doorknob rattled and the door swung open. I stepped back to avoid being hit in the face. What could he possibly think when he saw me? Words rose to my lips—an apology or a protest or an accusation, I’ll never know. Then the door began to swing closed and I saw Hiss’s narrow back. He was striding angrily away from me toward the stairs. I stared after him, flooded with adrenaline and animated by a strange idea. The door was still open; the answer to all my questions was just inside.

  What I did next came from no conscious plan—my natural inborn genius for bad decision-making came to the fore and I made an uncharacteristically athletic and completely soundless leap forward, then lunged sideways through the closing door and into the unlit office beyond. The door swung to and clicked shut behind me. After that instant of frantic motion, the world became utterly still.

  I stood in a small office consisting of one room with a single window fogged with dust that looked out onto an air shaft. I stood in the pale gray light, breathing hard from the sudden exertion, waiting for the moment Alger Hiss would come back. It was so perfectly possible—a forgotten wallet, a scrap of paper, anything at all. There would be nowhere to hide and no possible way to explain, but it was too late to think of that now.

  And what had I found? It didn’t look like a lawyer’s office. A professor’s, perhaps, an antiquarian of a dozen disciplines.

  A chipped wooden desk overflowing with papers; four high, overfull bookshelves crammed with old books, binders, and what seemed like small statuary; two gray metal filing cabinets. The walls were covered in papers of every description: maps, star charts, gravestone rubbings labeled with names of various New England towns.

  The window was shut tight. It was still warm from the day’s heat. I breathed in the smells of old books and the sweat of a stranger working long hours in a tiny space. I carried a book to the window where I could read the title. An Englishman’s Solitary Walk Through the Ural Mountain Regions and the Dire Events There Witnessed. In succession I pulled down a heavily annotated copy of Bradford’s History of Plimoth Plantation, A Speculative Glossary of Early Etruscan, and the more recent Burgess Shale Anomalies: An Alarmist View, which bore the stamp of the Peabody Museum at Harvard. I leafed through that one, looking at fanciful reconstructions of animals with five eyes and disturbing symmetries. On the desk, mimeographs of scholarly works on geology, linguistics, paleontology. What kind of spy was Alger Hiss, exactly?

  Finally, rummaging in the drawers, I discovered a notebook marked January–August 1948. A diary. The handwriting within was barely legible, and it grew more ragged as the account went on.

  It is with the greatest trepidation that I now set down the disturbing events of the past three years and of my visit to the place known as the Pawtuxet Farm. But I question whether the world should know of this. Perhaps the veil of benevolent illusion that clouds our common understanding of the universe should remain undisturbed, for having seen these awful sights I shall never again sleep untroubled.

  What was he getting at? More philosophical meanderings followed, none of which seemed too relevant. I turned the pages, looking for incriminating passages…since earliest childhood I have been susceptible to morbid tendencies of the mind…Was he a psychiatric case? That would explain a lot. The documents provided proved susceptible to the cryptographic methods of the ancients but the phrases I laboriously revealed created in me a nameless discomfort, a foreboding of…Jesus, this guy and his discomforts. Was he a spy or wasn’t he? I skipped ahead.

  My newfound partners supplied me with promising information, but could they be trusted? The Smiling Woman in particular seemed capable of any violence or su
bterfuge in pursuit of her own interests, whatever they were. I had embarked down a dark and dangerous path in search of the truth but I couldn’t stop. All thought of a socialist future had ceased to concern me. I did my errands as usual but the abominable truth hinted at in that gentleman farmer’s writings were a more pressing concern. Could the two letters truly be in the same hand, a century and a half apart? What strange materials had arrived under cover of darkness on a Burmese sloop? And why had the Department of Defense issued a quarantine order?

  Better! But it wasn’t a smoking gun. And his weird obsession with old letters didn’t add to the picture of a master conspirator.

  I proceeded to the central building of which the letters had spoken, this one stone rather than wood or metal. I crept inside in search of the source of those awful cries, still feebly hoping Whittaker had been wrong. I don’t mind saying my hand trembled as it held the flashlight. The door seemed to have been damaged by an indescribable…

  Enough already! I turned over more pages. Photographs of State Department documents. Cargo manifests coming through Boston Harbor. Aerial surveillance photographs showing a row of long white buildings in desert terrain, time-stamped a few months ago. Numerous documents in Cyrillic characters, meaningless to me. I picked up the last few pages.

  I was stunned. I now must question everything that has gone before. Did the Soviets even care about the information I supplied them with? Did Moscow orchestrate this hideous journey? Or has [a name here was crossed out] forced me to risk my reputation and perhaps my fucking sanity for her own…

  Finally. I had no idea what the rest of it meant, but crazy Alger Hiss was a damned Communist. I glanced around, unwilling to leave the treasure-house just yet. I copied down a phone number I saw written on a scrap of paper. I searched for a few more minutes until I discovered a spare key to the office in the back of a drawer.

  As long as he didn’t know I’d broken in, he’d leave everything where it was and ready for my return. The important thing was, there would be an absolute triumph in the press. I didn’t even need to feel bad about it because Alger Hiss was a dirty Commie spy. Dick Nixon was a hero.

  Chapter Six

  I told Pat I was feeling confident, that it was only a matter of time, and that I’d be working late again that night. In a few days, she’d see me win a clean victory.

  I daydreamed through the next day’s hearing while the rest of the committee questioned Hiss and he countered masterfully, the perfect image of an honest man beset and outraged at a baseless campaign of persecution. I doodled on my notepad and looked at the crowd. The members of the press were turning against me. Let them. If my case looked weak now, it would make the truth that much more shocking.

  When Hiss left at the end of the day, I trailed him far enough downtown to satisfy myself he was going home for the evening. A thought struck me—what if the Commies were following me? I circled a downtown block, looked in shop windows. What else does one do? I had a drink in a bar and left by a back way. It was close to eleven at night when I returned to the building on Seventy-First Street and climbed the stairs.

  My footsteps sounded too loud in the silence of the fifth floor, and I forced myself not to hurry. I was carrying a camera and a small flashlight in my briefcase to document what hard evidence I could, and tomorrow I’d claim to have received an anonymous tip from a concerned citizen. The next time I was here I’d have federal agents with me.

  I turned the key and, relieved, slipped out of the hall and into the darkened office, but I knew immediately something was wrong. I smelled fresh paint and dust; my footsteps pinged too loud and sharp. What was this? When I raised the flashlight, the beam lit bare walls. I stared. I turned all the way around in place, as if the desk and chair and shelving were going to leap out from wherever they’d hidden. I put one hand on the cool white wall. This was badly wrong, but how? Was it the wrong office? The wrong building?

  I heard footsteps coming steadily and purposefully down the hallway, and I froze. Then I snapped the flashlight off and stood waiting in the darkness. A key turned in the lock. It had to be Hiss. He’d known all along; he’d watched me come and he’d trapped me. I glanced at the window and thought of climbing out in a lunatic escape attempt, but there wasn’t time even for that. Would he laugh? Arrest me? What was he planning? With a titanic effort I composed myself and turned toward the door.

  It opened and two men stood there, silhouetted, and looked in at me with frank and unhurried curiosity. One was short and one tall, like a pair of comedians. The big man was a head taller and carried a steel briefcase. The smaller of them had a pistol raised.

  “Please take two steps backward,” the small man said in a light European accent I couldn’t place. East German? I took two long steps back and the windowsill nudged me just above the knees. The gunman stepped inside, the large man following. He closed the door. I held up my hands in a placating gesture. I tried and failed to stutter out my last words.

  “Is not to worry,” the second man said. Russian. He switched on the overhead light. Under the bright bulb, he was a heap of a man with a nose that had been broken a few times; he wore a suit of gray wool, wrinkled and elephantine. He took off his hat and set the briefcase down as if commencing a day at the office. I could see dusty outlines on the wall where the furniture had been yesterday.

  The other man was younger than I’d first thought, in his midtwenties at most. Hair combed straight back but balding already, and he looked like he hadn’t been getting much sleep. Something about the bad fit of his suit made me tag him as a student.

  “What’s your name?” the small man said, studying me.

  “Richard Nixon,” I told him. I’d never been held at gunpoint before, and it was surprisingly awkward. I felt like a host receiving unexpected guests. I had no eye for firearms but the pistol was a small semiautomatic, not at all showy. The room was small and I was sure he would hit me if he fired.

  “Hello, Richard. I’m Gregor, and this is Arkady.” He glanced up at the big man, who nodded. I made a guess that Gregor was in command here.

  “Are you the police?” I asked.

  “We’re not the police,” he said. I waited for him to go on. I tried sitting down on the windowsill, but it was too narrow. I stumbled and straightened up again. They watched the performance.

  “And what brings Richard Nixon to this part of town at such a late hour?” Gregor asked. He leaned against the empty wall.

  “I’m investigating,” I said, “a crime.”

  “A crime!” Gregor said, brow knit with mock concern. “And what kind of crime is that?”

  “It’s a very important case. A Soviet spy.” I glanced up at the Russian, but he said nothing, just looked over at his partner.

  “A Commie spy, is that it? Very exciting,” Gregor said.

  “Are you…Communists?” I asked.

  “No,” Gregor said.

  “I am, actually,” Arkady said, putting his hands in his pockets. “Sorry. Greggy is socialist pussy. But we work on him.”

  “What did you find, Mr. Nixon?” said Gregor. “In your investigations. I’d like to know.” His accent nagged at me; he sounded as if he’d lived in half a dozen countries before his teens. His pink skin didn’t sweat.

  “Just evidence,” I said. “Different kinds of evidence. Was found. Look, I don’t know who you are but you can’t hold me here.” I stepped away from the wall. The big man took his hands out of his pockets, and abruptly the room felt even smaller. Gregor stood well back, his gun out of my reach.

  “Seems very serious,” he said. “Are you a policeman, Nixon? Federal agent, maybe? Counterintelligence?” He sounded like he was maybe about finished with this conversation and what I’d thought was going to be a long interrogation was just pre-execution banter.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said. It would be so lovely to be able to say I did something brave here. Laughed at their threats; spat in their faces. If I were that kind of person, post–W
orld War II American history would have been a very different story. “Please…I’m a United States congressman, for Christ’s sake. I can tell you things. I’ll do anything.”

  “Really?” the Russian said. “You are Congress?” He seemed genuinely a little starstruck.

  “California,” I said. “The Twelfth District. Richard Milhous Nixon.”

  “Holy shit,” Gregor said.

  “Is not what I was told, Gregor,” said the taller man. “Private detective, you said. This is the big shit we are in now.”

  “Shut up. I’m trying to think.”

  “Congressman we can’t just dump in mudflat. Is not quite the same.”

  “Shut up, please,” Gregor said, then turned to me. “Nixon! Did you take an oath?”

  “A what?” I said.

  “An oath of office. You took one?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “How did it run? Exact words, as much as you can remember.”

  “Well, it was…just a minute.” I’ve always been proud of my memory. “It was—‘I do solemnly swear…that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’ Let me think…I’ve forgotten the middle…the ending is ‘I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.’”

  “You hear it, Arkady? You understand?”

  “A little. What is it you are thinking?”

  “He’s federally sworn. A compact.”

  “I have theory background, yes, I get that far—”

  “This is the asset we’ve waited for. We’ve got the blood of the Elect here, and your field kit. From this we can stage a strategic incursion.”

  “Bullshit. How?”

  “You weren’t in the meetings. I’ll walk you through. You’re finally going to see what the Nth Directorate does,” he said. His lips were trembling a little.