Face of the Enemy

by Beverle Graves Myers

  It wasn’t until after the Stork had returned to its elegant orgy of dining, drinking, and dancing that McKenna had noticed Cabby rubbing her swollen wrist. He’d immediately sent his sergeant home and had driven her up to Mt. Sinai, where an x-ray revealed what a dog-tired intern called “a moderate ligamentary sprain.” With her right arm in a sling, she’d be typing left-handed, hunt-and-peck style, for a week or so.

  Cabby, now at the curb, reached for the door handle and was surprised when McKenna loped around the sedan to help her into the car. Oddly touched at his concern, she let him settle her aching wrist on a folded blanket retrieved from the trunk. With few vehicles on the street at that hour, they sped unimpeded down Broadway, past tall buildings scattered with lights, and slowed only as they passed the still-illuminated theaters of Times Square. The occasional chatter from McKenna’s police radio did nothing to disrupt an air of quiet intimacy fostered by the solitude and darkness. Thanks to the intern’s pain tablet, Cabby soon slipped into a waking daze, half planning, half dreaming her story for the next issue: “Prominent Club Woman Seized in Drug Case.”

  “What you asked me earlier?” McKenna spoke unexpectedly.

  “Huh?” Cabby startled, coming out of her fog.

  “You know—outside Louie’s? About whether I was against the war, like Fairchild.” Steering with his knees, he peeled the cellophane from a pack of Lucky Strikes and, with the tips of his thumb and forefinger, tweezed out a cigarette from the full package.

  “Oh, well…” That wasn’t exactly what she’d asked, but it was interesting he’d taken it that way.

  The car wobbled a bit as he lit the smoke and took his first drag. “I was there, you know, for the last one.”

  “Were you?” She was alert now, the dark ambiguity of his tone catching her attention. “Was it hell?”

  “Yeah. And hell is too mild a word for what we went through.” He seemed to be in a ruminative mood. “One thing I learned, though—ya make assumptions about people without any basis, it’ll come back to bite you.” He waved the cigarette for emphasis, and its glowing tip made a fiery arc in the darkness.

  Okay, back to the discussion about Jap-hatred they’d had on Grand Street. Cabby forced herself to remain silent. Halper would have called this a “listening time.”

  “In ‘17 the draft was breathing down my neck, just like it is for the boys now. I volunteered for the Army Tank Corps—being surrounded by thick metal plates seemed a lot safer than dodging across battlefields with a rifle.”

  “Was it?” They’d reached the Brooklyn Bridge, and mist was rising off the East River, smudging the dark hulks of steamers and cargo ships. Blocks away, lights glared in the Navy Yard. A blackout—like the one in London—was coming, she knew, but it sure hadn’t started yet. The Yard was one huge, bright sitting duck.

  “Hell, no. Nothing was safe over there.” He took another long drag on the cigarette as they bumped over the bridge. “Does the Argonne Forest mean anything to you?”

  “I’ve heard of it…”

  “Well…” The light was red at Tillary Street. McKenna pulled the car to a halt. The imposing Borough Hall was just ahead.

  “Picture this—mud and smoke—noise that would bust your eardrums. Thousands of men fighting over a couple acres of scabby ground. I was driving a light tank with my commander taking the shots. Made decent headway until I hit a tank trap—trenches dug by Kraut engineers, then flooded. Diabolical. Flipped our tank. Water was coming in fast. ‘You first,’ I told the lieutenant, but he was already halfway through the hatch. Got stuck and I had to push him out. By that time I couldn’t see a damn thing. Muddy water up to my chin. I aimed my head where I thought the hatch was—and hit steel.” He turned his head and looked Cabby in the eye. “I was seeing stars then. The mud and the water and the steel roof—thought I was a goner.”

  She was wide awake now and listening hard. “What happened?”

  “Guy pulled me out and set me on my pins.”

  She thought of heroic American soldiers. “Your lieutenant!”

  He snorted. “Hardly. He woulda been heading for the hills like his backside was on fire. That chicken sh…ah…” McKenna took a last lungful of smoke, rolled the window down and flipped the butt out. “No, it was a Kraut. By then they were using kids—he was sixteen if he was a day. I’ll never forget his face—scared wide-eyed. He pointed back to our lines and said something I didn’t understand, then, ‘Schnell.’ That I knew, so I took off and never looked back.”

  “I got it,” Cabby said, as the light changed to green and McKenna threw the car into gear. “You’ve been to hell and back, so you agree with Nigel Fairchild about staying out of this war.”

  “That’s probably the only thing I agree with him on.” McKenna nodded. “But what the hay, it’s too late now. The President signed the declarations this…ah…yesterday…afternoon. Now we’ve got the whole pack of ‘em to fight.”

  Cabby nodded, recalling how she’d felt when the formal declaration of war had come through on the wire. She’d been in the City room, with the December darkness beginning to fall outside the large windows, writing up the story of the women volunteers’ luncheon. Suddenly the news made the rounds, buzzing from National desk, to City and then to Foreign like a grim version of that kid’s “telephone” game. For the first time, she realized that she was afraid, truly afraid. Not just for herself, but for everyone. If this war was anything like the last one, more people would die from starvation and disease than from the fighting itself. Women, children—millions of them.

  And what made Americans think we’d be spared?

  “So, no,” McKenna concluded, turning onto Flatbush. “I’m no isolationist like Fairchild. But believe me, if I were eighteen again, with this war coming on, I sure as hell would think about serving in some noncombatant position as a pacifist rather than going around killing sixteen-year-old German boys. Or Japanese boys, for that matter.” He craned his neck, reading street signs. “Then…in the last war, I mean…that would have earned me a white feather. But, ya know, if I were the man I am now, I wouldn’t give a damn.”

  “No, I don’t think you would,” Cabby said, pensively, as she pointed ahead to her street. If only her father had been anything like this man, her life would have been a different story. She wondered if McKenna had any children.

  She wondered if he had any sons.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Helda looks so young, Cabby thought, as the landlady ran down the porch steps with unbound hair streaming in waves and sprigged flannel nightgown billowing behind. All dignity forgotten, she was calling, “Howie? Do you haff Howie?”

  “No,” Cabby replied, bumping the car door closed with her hip. Good god, that boy hasn’t come home yet?

  McKenna had insisted on walking Cabby to the door. As Helda reached them, Cabby noticed a sudden gleam of interest before he slipped on his cop mask. He was looking at Helda in that certain way—exactly like Joey Gaetano used to look at her.

  Hmmm.

  Louise followed Helda out onto the cold pavement. She carried an orange-and-yellow crocheted afghan that she threw around the landlady’s shoulders. Cabby acknowledged her with a nod. Trust Louise to take care of someone in distress.

  In tears, Helda collapsed on Cabby’s shoulder. “I don’t know what to do. Nobody knows where he is.”

  Cabby started to check her watch. With a wince, she remembered she’d put it in her purse when the intern had wrapped up her wrist. “What time is it?”

  “1:30,” said McKenna, gaze still on Helda.

  “Oh, you poor thing.” Cabby patted Helda’s back with her good hand and the landlady began to wail in earnest.

  Louise gave a big sigh and spread her hands helplessly.

  Cabby threw McKenna a desperate look. Since he seemed so taken with Helda, maybe he would help. “Her
fourteen-year-old son’s disappeared,” Cabby told him. “Help us get her into the house, will ya?”

  McKenna hesitated, so Cabby threw her good arm around Helda’s waist. The detective then supported the landlady gingerly by the elbow. The rumpus had awakened a next-door neighbor, a fat woman in a woolly robe, who came running out on her porch, pulling curlers out of her hair. With an authority born of long practice, McKenna waved her away. Together he and Cabby fumbled Helda up the steps and into the front parlor. Louise directed them to the large horsehair sofa.

  “What should I do?” Helda sobbed, clutching a satin Niagara Falls souvenir pillow to her chest. She curled up in an agonized ball and continued sobbing.

  “She’s been like this since midnight,” Louise said. “It may be time for a sedative. I don’t know what else I can do.”

  McKenna reached out, impulsively it seemed, to brush a tendril of hair from Helda’s eyes. “Aw, come on, lady.”

  “Helda,” Cabby said, “this is Lieutenant McKenna of the police. Maybe he can give you some advice about finding Howie.”

  Helda looked up, desperate blue eyes wide. “You can get my Howie back?”

  McKenna stood speechless.

  Cabby watched the detective quizzically. His reaction to Helda both amused and enlightened her. Even at his age—he must be close to fifty!—he was vulnerable to women? Well. Well. So, it went on that long between the sexes? Whaddaya know?

  Finally the detective reached into an inside pocket and pulled out his notebook. After clearing his throat, he asked Helda, “What does the boy look like, Ma’am, and how long has he been gone?”

  “Wass goin’ on?” A groggy Ruthie, wearing red flannels, slouched down the stairs and through the parlor archway. “All this noise this hour of the night?” She registered McKenna’s presence with a start. “And who the hell is he?” She paraded over and peered into his face. “You the guy who’s been hanging around outside?”

  Someone’s been hanging around? Louise thought as her hand flew to her heart. Oh, no! Was the FBI following her?

  Oh, god! Cabby thought with a shudder. It’s the guy in the gray suit—Fairchild’s goon!—if he finds out what happened at the Stork, I’m a goner for sure.

  Ernst! Helda cried and covered her face with her hands.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Friday, morning

  When Abe turned the Ford onto Bleecker Street, the ball of tension between Louise’s shoulders began to ease. Finally they would secure Masako’s studio paintings and have the captions translated before the Feds could use them to further their own agenda. Last night, a heart-to-heart talk with Cabby had freighted this errand with even more weight. During the nightclub adventure with Lieutenant McKenna, Louise’s roommate had learned that Fairchild might very well have an alibi for the night of Shelton’s murder. Masako Oakley was back in double jeopardy. The screws were tightening on her enemy alien case, and she was once again the prime suspect in Arthur Shelton’s murder.

  All the way from Brooklyn, Louise and Abe had planned what he only half jokingly referred to as “the heist.” Professor Bridges would meet them at the studio. So would the art movers recommended by Desmond Cox. They’d swath the canvases in padded moving quilts and transport them in a van up the West Side elevated highway to Lillian Bridge’s apartment. A legacy from a deceased great-uncle, Lillian would inform any nosy neighbors.

  To Louise, Greenwich Village felt almost like home. Unlike the dizzying vertical lines and breakneck speed of the rest of Manhattan, these quaint blocks struck her as a real neighborhood. She could easily envision Masako painting here, gaining inspiration from the interlacing branches of the winter-bare trees that lined most every street, the wrought iron gates offering glimpses of brickwork courtyards, the shabby mixed facades of nineteenth-century townhouses—wood-frame, brownstone, brick.

  Now, Abe positioned the Ford parallel to a beat-up green Nash in front of a four-story row house on Bleecker Street and began backing into a cramped parking space. Even though they were early, Lillian Bridges already paced the sidewalk in front of the old building, elegant in a soft, green, Irish tweed jacket and brown trousers. As Abe jockeyed the sedan to the curb, she flipped her cigarette at the gutter, strode toward them, and yanked open the passenger-side door before Louise had even grasped the handle.

  “Come on, you two. What are we waiting for?” Lillian briskly led the way inside the building and toward the stairs at the rear of the hall.

  “You’ve been here before?” Abe asked her, following at his own pace.

  “It’s been a while, but, yes. Masako was shy about showing her work. Robert, however, enjoyed giving friends what he called a ‘sneak peek.’”

  They rounded the second floor landing and Abe went on, “Was? You make it sound like the little lady won’t be doing any more painting.”

  Lillian stopped on the stairs and, with a twist, turned to face Abe. “I suppose that’s in your hands, Counselor, but I tremble for her. I truly do. Family ties to Emperor Hirohito’s government. Prime suspect in a murder case….”

  Abe gave the woman an enigmatic smile. “Don’t sell me short, Professor. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

  Louise gulped. Abe radiated confidence. But unless the Japanese woman was willing to come up with a rational explanation, how was he planning to deal with her presence at the gallery on the night of the murder?

  “But first,” he continued, “I have to confront the loyalty question.”

  “In these times,” Lillian murmured darkly, “loyalty is hardly a minor matter.”

  “Listen, lady,” Abe shot back, “even G-men have to produce evidence. So far all Bagwell and his boys have thrown at us is racially biased speculation.”

  The professor gazed at him soberly, then began climbing the stairs again. Her words floated back over her shoulder. “I suppose my agreeing to harbor the paintings will be of some help.”

  “I expect so.” Abe’s voice carried over the hollow clumping of their footsteps. “Would you be willing to help me with something else?”

  Lillian stopped at the third-floor landing. Wan light from the wire-enforced window lit one side of her face. “What’s that?” She looked genuinely curious.

  “I assume you know that the Immigration Act of 1924 excluded Mrs. Oakley from obtaining American citizenship—along with just about anyone from the Far East.”

  “Ye-e-ss?” In the half-light, her patrician features reflected the strain of the past few days.

  “But Mrs. Oakley always intended to go through the process of at least obtaining permanent resident status, right?”

  “Yes. She and Robert were both keen, but I understand it’s quite a shockingly involved process for a Jap.” Without further remark, Lillian began climbing again.

  Abe coughed. “Well, if you could swear out an affidavit as to her intention…”

  “Of course.” The words drifted back. “Anything to help poor Masako.” They’d reached the fourth floor. “Louise, dear,” Lillian Bridges said, turning to her, “I believe Robert entrusted you with the key.”

  The old-fashioned iron key creaked in the lock but turned without a hitch, admitting them into a large, dusty room that smelled faintly of oil paint and turpentine. The light in the studio was so dim that Louise thought her vision had gone hazy. Heavy clouds had threatened rain all morning, and the slanting skylight didn’t provide much illumination. She felt the wall inside the door for a light switch, found one, and flicked it on—only to reveal that their mission at Masako Fumi Oakley’s studio was nothing but a fool’s errand.

  Louise stood stunned with disbelief. The riot of color, of texture, of shapes she’d anticipated was nowhere to be seen. The dingy stucco walls were bare; the large, paint-spattered easel was empty. There wasn’t a water color, an oil painting, a picture scroll or a rudimentary sketc
h to be seen. Nothing.

  Lillian Bridges gasped, obviously staggered by the absence of the paintings.

  Abe pushed past the two women, whipped off his hat and ranged around the dusty room like a wolf in search of prey. He shook a faded blue smock hanging from a hook, pawed through a neat array of paint boxes, ink bottles and brushes stacked on some rough shelving, and then moved to a work table to examine a roll of virgin canvas and some stretcher boards.

  “Damn.” Abe whirled from the table. “Is there another room?” he asked Lillian.

  The professor had been turning slowly on the thick heel of her sensible club shoe. “No. This is it.” She stared at the paint-spattered easel as if, by sheer force of will, she might conjure up a canvas. “There should be thirty paintings—at least. Last time I was here they were all over the place, hanging on those hooks, on the floor leaning against the wall four or five deep. Arthur took—maybe—twenty for the show.”

  She plopped down, in a most inelegant manner, on an ancient blue plush settee, and an explosion of dust motes momentarily hovered in the air. “Obviously, they’ve been stolen.” She rubbed a slender, long-fingered hand across her face. “Robert will be so upset.”

  “I’ll call the police.” Louise reached for the telephone on a small table by the door and dialed O for Operator.

  Abe slammed his hand over hers, disconnecting the call. “Slow down a minute. Just think about it—there’s no sign of a break-in. Also, there’s a far more likely possibility.”

  Louise was quick to understand. “The FBI, right? Someone must have told them about the studio. And—”

  Abe jumped in. “And in that case, there’s no sense in making an official report. That would just complicate things for Mrs. Oakley. Now, we’ve got to get out of here and head off those movers.”

  “Right!” Lillian nodded emphatically.

  Louise, with a self-conscious glance at the other two, retrieved the flag-embroidered handkerchief from her purse and began to wipe off the heavy black telephone receiver.