Face of the Enemy

by Beverle Graves Myers

  She began to rise from her chair, but he waved her down. “Wait a minute, here’s your next assignment—try not to botch this one. Ya know the America First Committee?”

  “The…isolationist group?” Oh, yes. She knew it. Her father had joined last spring, ranting about Winston Churchill and those damn Jews.

  “Yeah. Them. Nigel Fairchild, their local chairman, is giving a talk tonight at the headquarters on Madison Avenue. I’d be interested to find out what that bunch is up to now that war’s been declared.”

  “Uh, me, too. The Pearl Harbor attacks rendered them irrelevant in one fell swoop.”

  “I’d like to think so, but I’m sure there’s a few of those goose-steppers who’d be more than happy to see Britain fall to Hitler along with the rest of Europe.” Twisting his expression into something reminiscent of a wizened apple, Halper mimicked, “Why risk American peace and prosperity to save Britain’s ass?

  “So, go cover the meeting. Five-hundred words. Got that?” Halper pulled the cover off his typewriter and rolled a sheet of paper into the carriage.

  Cabby jumped up from her seat, grateful to still have a job. “Yes, sir. Mr. Halper, sir.” She’d get right on Nigel Fairchild. A high-society holdover from the Old Guard who saw Roosevelt as a traitor to both class and country. Liked to shoot his mouth off.

  Halfway out the door, she pivoted around. “And, sir? I won’t disappoint you.” She tried to follow that with something more eloquent, but Bud Smallwood was sneering from behind his desk, and shame silenced her.

  Chapter Forty-one

  If it had been a tweedy, mannish man with horn-rimmed glasses sitting behind a neatly ordered reception desk in Columbia’s Art Humanities department, McKenna wouldn’t have felt a qualm, but his mental file-box didn’t contain a heading for a woman who seemed quite so brusque and in command. Well, maybe it did—the nuns who’d tormented him for years at Holy Cross Parish School on West Forty-third Street.

  His stomach did the customary little lurch when he thought of the good Sisters, so he flipped his wallet open to the police ID and summoned his most official voice. “Where can I find Professor Lawrence Smoot?” Smoot’s office had been dark and deserted when McKenna approached it that morning. Perhaps the man was teaching a class somewhere in the vast, ivy-covered building, in which case McKenna would never find him without help.

  The secretary twined her fingers inside the palms of her hands and pressed thumbs to her lips. “You’re too late,” she stated in a voice resonating with doom.

  “Too late?” Good god, the man’s croaked himself, McKenna thought. Could that be it? Smoot and Shelton have a falling out over the loan of twenty grand. One queer kills another. In a fit of delayed remorse, Smoot commits suicide. Neat.

  But, no. The secretary’s grim voice went on. “Professor Smoot isn’t in. After his eight a.m. class, he sprinted out of here like Jesse Owens. Now, he’s missed his ten o’clock, and I haven’t the slightest idea why.” Her lips stretched. She stabbed a finger toward a desk calendar. “You were here on Monday, I know. That was the day he barricaded himself in his office. Since then he’s been slinking around looking like an undergraduate pulling all-night cram sessions. I don’t like it. I have a department to run, and we can’t have professors leaving classes unattended and neglecting office hours. This is Columbia—it’s simply not done.”

  “You have Smoot’s address on file?”

  “Of course,” she replied without making a move.

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. “I’d like it, please.”

  The Dragon Nun flipped through a small box of index cards, used a blank one to write down an address, and handed it to him. “Whatever Professor Smoot’s situation is, arrangements must be made. When you find him, officer, tell him to call Thelma.”

  McKenna felt something akin to pity for Professor Smoot.

  ***

  The address wasn’t far. McKenna’s driver let him out on one of the quieter Upper West Side streets lined with three-story brownstones. While he waited on the stoop to be admitted to the professor’s parlor-floor apartment, McKenna tried to put together a series of Smoot’s actions that would fit the evidence.

  First, Smoot attends the Fumi opening, so he knows that, despite Mrs. De Forest’s little tantrum, the show is raking in the cash.

  And what cash! McKenna shook his head. Brenner’s search of the files had nailed the exact figures: twenty-two thousand five hundred. Quadruple his yearly salary—for those messes! Even after Shelton had split fifty-fifty with the artist, printed up that brochure, and put on a swanky soiree, the dealer was over ten grand to the good.

  Okay, so Smoot begins to wonder how long the lucky streak will last in the face of mounting opposition to the show. On Friday, he visits the gallery and asks Shelton for all or part of the twenty grand he’s owed. Shelton refuses and Smoot goes wild, swinging the first object that comes to hand. Maybe that heavy brush pot? Then he stages the scene with the body under that lurid painting—makes it look like one of the crazier Jap art protesters argued with Shelton—and he hurries to the theater in the hope of establishing an alibi.

  Nix on the alibi, though. The boys had found an usher who remembered Smoot sitting alone, but Doc Lefevers’ generous estimate on time of death meant that Smoot’s presence at the play wasn’t going to save him. And the professor hadn’t come up with any corroboration on his earlier whereabouts.

  Yeah, well, it might’ve just worked that way.

  The buzzer admitted McKenna into a cramped foyer. Smoot frowned when he saw his visitor, but bowed him toward a corridor that entered a living room painted in restful tones of blue and peach. As he’d expected, an Asian influence predominated on walls and in display cabinets, but the furniture was unadulterated modernism—tubular steel, glass cubes, and woven leather straps that struck McKenna as remnants off a construction site. He sank into one of the tilted lounge chairs but kept his feet firmly planted and his back straight.

  Smoot closed the book that lay on the glass side table, reclaimed a smoldering cigarette from a kidney-shaped ashtray, and asked, “Drink, Lieutenant?”

  “Ya kidding? It’s not even noon.” That clearly hadn’t stopped Smoot. A glass with an inch of rye sat on the table between an ivory cigarette box and an ashtray full of butts. The room reeked of smoke and booze, the stench of despair.

  Smoot shrugged. “Sometimes a man needs a little liquid courage—whatever the hour.”

  McKenna got that. The day he’d left Gayle at the rest home up in Harrison, he’d burned rubber all the way back to Manhattan, garaged the car, then stopped at the first bar to get well and truly pissed. And that had been eleven a.m. But what was biting Smoot? Grief? Or guilt?

  “Have you come to tell me you’ve found Arthur’s killer?” Smoot clutched the highball glass.

  “Early days yet. Still following up leads.” McKenna pointed to a mirrored cabinet that held some odd little metal objects, but kept his gaze on Smoot. “Got any brush pots in your collection, Professor?”

  “Brush pots?” Smoot’s expression was puzzled.

  “Yeah.” Thanks to Desmond Cox, McKenna had the lowdown on brush pots. “Learned men all over the Orient kept these pots on their desks to hold the brushes they wrote their squiggly letters with. A lot of ‘em were made of precious materials. Heavy stuff—like jade. Proof of the scholar’s high status. Kinda like a guy wants to show off an expensive car.”

  “I’m well aware of what a brush pot is.” Smoot crossed one leg. “I just don’t happen to collect them. I prefer more exotic items. These cricket cages, for instance.” He nodded toward the mirrored cabinet.

  McKenna sat up even straighter. “That’s what those things are? Cages for bugs?”

  Smoot smiled easily. “The cult of the cricket was peculiar to Chinese gentlemen of leisure. They kept them as pets and found their chirpin
g melodic.”

  “Ya don’t say?”

  “Oh, yes. To encourage their songs, they tickled the crickets with tiny brushes. Collectors can specialize in different areas of cricket paraphernalia—brushes, tweezers, cage cleaners, ceramic feeding trays. I happen to prefer the cages.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Why the interest in brush pots, Lieutenant?”

  “There’s one missing from the gallery.”

  “Really? Arthur never mentioned it.” Smoot stretched a hand toward the cigarette box.

  McKenna realized Smoot had gotten more of a rise out of him with the cricket cages than he had with the mention of brush pots. Smoot would have to be one cool character to be able to discuss the murder weapon so casually. Or maybe it wasn’t the jade pot that had smashed Shelton’s skull after all. McKenna wasn’t about to drop the possibility of Smoot’s guilt. Time to bring out the big guns.

  “You lied to me the other day,” he stated flatly.

  “I beg to differ.” Smoot froze as he creaked the box lid open. “I gave an honest answer to every question you put to me.”

  “It was a lie of omission. I asked you about your business relations with Shelton, and you managed to sidestep the issue of twenty thousand simoleons.”

  “So, Miss Desmond has been blabbing, has he?” Smoot pursed his lips. “Is it relevant? A loan between friends?”

  McKenna swore in his head. “That kind of dough is always relevant.”

  “Well—” Smoot thought for a second or two, rose, and patted the pockets of his soft smoking jacket. “Out of nicotine, Lieutenant. You’ll have to excuse me for a moment.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  McKenna waited until Smoot had passed into the hallway, then heaved himself up from the leather basket chair. It was like struggling out of a hammock. When he reached the door the professor had vanished through, he stopped and cocked an ear. Smoot’s voice came from somewhere deep in the apartment.

  Words McKenna couldn’t make out, pause, more muffled words.

  A phone call, then, in response to his question about the gallery seed money. He whirled and swept his gaze around the room. No phone extension. When the professor returned, brandishing a pack of Pall Malls, McKenna was back across the living room admiring the cricket cages.

  During the rest of the interview, McKenna felt like one of those old Chinese guys tickling their crickets through the bars of those tiny cages. He poked and prodded, but Smoot wouldn’t sing any tune he wanted to hear. Yes, he’d helped Arthur with some start-up cash, but it had been an open-handed, pay-whenever-you can sort of gesture. No, he wasn’t hounding the dear boy. Certainly not. He believed in plowing profit back into the business until it was well on its way.

  Only one question drew blood. Did Desmond Cox and Arthur Shelton socialize outside of work? Smoot bristled at that and gave McKenna an earful about snakes in the grass and foxes guarding henhouses.

  McKenna was about to pack it in when the buzzer sounded. Smoot sashayed out, almost gleefully. A far cry from his earlier demeanor.

  When the professor returned, it was in the company of a distinguished man in a cashmere overcoat and homburg. Mr. Overcoat shifted his briefcase so he could shake McKenna’s hand. He then withdrew a card from a silver case.

  “Caspar Mandlebaum, Lieutenant. I’m Lawrence Smoot’s attorney. From here on out, any questions for the professor will have to go through me.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  Cabby loved the New York Public Library. When she was a kid in the Bronx, it had been her salvation. Her father would come home smashed and start throwing furniture around, and she’d sneak out of the apartment. She’d skulk up to the Kingsbridge branch and hunker down with a book until Mrs. Katz touched her on the shoulder to let her know it was closing time. It was always the same book, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

  She’d pull out a chair at the table in the A-B section of the fiction stacks, open the book just anywhere, and cry into its pages until the tears dried up and she was in Jo March’s world again. Jo was more of a sister to her than her real sister, Eileen. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Jo March had shown Cabby writing could lift her out of a dead-end life.

  So, for comfort, once she’d left the building after Halper’s dressing down, Cabby headed directly down Fifth Avenue to the majestic main building of the New York Public Library. It had been snowing all morning, and, except for a shoveled path in the very center, the wide flight of library steps was covered with snow. Standing on the wet sidewalk, looking up, she was flanked by Patience and Fortitude, the identical stone lions guarding those steps. Nonetheless she was more conscious of those other twin monsters, Shame and Disgrace. Her face was hot—her entire body was hot—with humiliation. Even with snowflakes falling on her cheeks, she was burning.

  And the worst of it? Halper was right. Stealing Louise’s notes had been a shoddy act. How could she have done that to her roommate? Blinded by her success with the Shelton homicide piece, she’d resorted to shortcuts and unethical practices. Shoddy. That’s what Halper had said, “shoddy.”

  Cabby swiped at a tear that was beginning to freeze beneath her left eye. If she was such a bad reporter, maybe she should just quit. She envisioned herself marching back up to the newsroom, typing the letter of resignation with an efficient clatter of keys, and shoving it in Halper’s face before she stalked out.

  And then what?

  No, Cabby Ward wasn’t a quitter. And she wasn’t a bad reporter, either. Patience and Fortitude, that’s what she needed. And a good-size dose of Integrity. She placed one booted foot on the first marble step. Up she climbed, step by step. Patience. Fortitude. Integrity.

  She’d meant to begin by researching Nigel Fairchild and America First in preparation for tonight’s assignment, but, somehow, she ended up in one of the palazzo-like third-floor reading rooms with Little Women open in front of her. Next to her at the long oak table a scrawny gray-haired man was reading a Yiddish newspaper. On the other side of the bronze reading lamp a plump girl with her brown hair in a loose chignon was writing on a thick pad of lined paper. A guy who looked like a professor, youngish, with a dark goatee, got up to retrieve yet another tome to add to his pile of shabby books.

  A woman lugging a heavy baby in a blue snowsuit passed Cabby’s desk, capturing her attention. Her nose was red with cold and her coat far too light for the season. She didn’t look as if she belonged here. Cabby wouldn’t have been surprised if the young woman had come into the library just to get out of the cold. She reminded her of Eileen, her sister, pregnant at sixteen and now, at twenty-four, the mother of three with another on the way and no end in sight.

  Do you want to end up like Eileen? Cabby asked herself, rifling the pages of the book through her fingers. You’ve worked so damn hard and taken so many risks to get where you are. Do you want to jeopardize all that? What the hell are you doing? Halper gave you an assignment. Get your butt moving.

  Nigel Fairchild? Where could she find out what he’d been up to? Let’s see, she’d look in the New York Social Register—that should be next door in the reference room. Then she’d go down to the periodicals room on the first floor and read through some of Walter Winchell’s gossip columns. Someone like Winchell would surely be keeping an eye on a goddamn socialite isolationist s.o.b. like Fairchild. And then she’d scoot on down to the Times morgue and read through the back files on America First.

  She picked up Little Women and took it to the returns window.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Helda had never liked Anna Frommer. She was certain the tight braids coiled around the top of Anna’s small head strained at a multitude of unchristian thoughts. One snip with a pair of sharp shears, and revenge, envy, and pettiness would come rushing out, like the evils escaping Pandora’s box.

  So she felt a chill tremor of anxiety when she looked up and saw who was knoc
king on her kitchen door. Once Helda had stopped attending Bund meetings with Ernst, the only contact between her and Frau Frommer had been the occasional exchange of frigid nods at church. Now here was the gute frau knocking on the door as if she was a friend stopping by for morning coffee. Puzzled, Helda moved to admit her fellow congregant and relieve her of the heavy cast-iron pot she carried; it was necessary to be hospitable to other Lutherans—but she didn’t have to hurry.

  “Frau Frommer, what a surprise to see you,” Helda said in German. Then, begrudgingly, she added, “Come in. I will put the coffee on. What is it you bring me?”

  “Just a little hasenpfeffer. I know you like the homeland food.” Frau Frommer was short and thin, with a bosom shaped like a stale jelly roll. “I also know you could not make this for your boarders to eat—they would not like it. Americans…ach!”

  “Danke, danke.” Helda switched to English. “So thoughtful.” It was no longer safe to converse in German, even at home. Anyone might be listening. They were only talking about rabbit stew, but American ears could hear sinister meanings. She remembered the suspicious look on the policeman’s face yesterday when she had yelled at Howie, Halt die Schnauze! What had the officer thought? That Helda was commanding her son to join the stormtroopers?

  “Come. Sit. The coffee will be just a minute.”

  “Nein. Danke. I will be going. The bake sale for the Ladies’ Relief Society is Saturday, you know, and I must set the yeast for my apfelkuchen.” Standing in the doorway in her second-best navy faille, Frau Frommer continued, “In these perilous times, we must all do what we can.” She slipped off the quilted oven mitts with which she had carried the iron pot, and whispered, “As is, of course, your dear Ernst.”

  Helda ceased breathing.

  From inside one of the mitts, the churchwoman retrieved a small white envelope and, with a knowing look, slipped it into Helda’s hand.