Night Life

by David C. Taylor

  “How’s the project going? Is Ribera destroying or creating today?”

  “Is this how we’re going to do it? Start with lies? You know I didn’t go to Ribera’s this morning.”

  He said nothing. It was her lead. His heart raced.

  “I saw you come out of the diner across from the camera store. I was looking out the window. You followed me. I don’t how, but you did.”

  “The rooftops.”

  “Ah.” A wry smile. “Smart. I thought if you tried to follow me down the block I would see you, and if you couldn’t follow me down the block you would have no way of knowing where I went. Imagine my shock.”

  “Imagine mine.”

  “Yes.” She shook her head in regret.

  He walked around the counter and into the living room. She lifted the book from her lap and put her hand on the automatic it concealed. “Mike, please. Far enough.”

  He settled into a chair across the room and took a slug of bourbon. Some of the tension went out of her, and she took her hand off the gun.

  “I thought I was careful, but I knew you were onto me.”

  “Someone told me you weren’t all you pretended to be.”

  “Who?” She saw him hesitate. “What does it matter?”

  “A man named Crofoot.”

  “CIA.”

  “You know him.”

  “We try to keep track of the people who can hurt us.”

  “Who are you, exactly?” He held up a hand to stop her from speaking. “Don’t do the business about Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, and your dead mother, and the old guy who taught you how to weld.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’d like to hear it.”

  “Okay. Not Alquippa, but I was born in a town like it and not far away. My parents lost their business in the Depression. The bank foreclosed on the house. They took what little money they had left and moved my brother and me to Russia. They believed in what was happening there. They’d lost faith in America. They weren’t the only ones. There were a lot of American families where we lived. We believed there could be a better future for working people.”

  “How’s that working out?”

  She ignored his sneer. “Every experiment has problems in the beginning. America, the ideal of freedom, every man created equal. Almost two hundred years later, and Negroes are little better than slaves.”

  “Where did all this take place, Moscow?”

  “No, Molotov. Near the Ural mountains. That’s where I learned to weld. There was an old man, and he taught me in a tank factory during the war. They used children in the tight places where a grown person couldn’t fit.”

  “Did you know Ingram there?”

  “No. I never met Ingram. We were in different cells.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “You’ll never get him.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter. You might as well tell me.”

  She thought about it and then shrugged. “You know him as Apfel. He developed the photographs everybody wants so much. Ingram stole the negatives. Apfel went to retrieve them. Ingram refused to give them back. He said he had buyers who would make him rich. He offered to share with Apfel.”

  “But Apfel was too good a Communist to accept a bribe.”

  “He’s a believer. Like you, he’ll do what he has to do if he believes he’s right.”

  He let that one go. “He killed Ingram, even if he didn’t mean to. He killed Fisher and Werth and Freed just to clean up loose ends.”

  “And you wouldn’t? You threw a man out a window without stopping to think if he would live or die.”

  Cassidy started to tell her that Franklin deserved it, but he knew that was the thin excuse everybody wrapped around a dirty move. He stood up abruptly, and she put her hand on the gun in her lap. He went into the kitchen and made another drink. “Sure you don’t want one?”

  “I do. Will you make me a martini the way I like it?”

  He brought her the drink.

  “Thank you.” She took it with her right hand, and he could have taken the gun then, but she would not talk if he had the gun. She smiled up at him as if she knew what he was thinking.

  He went back to his chair across the room.

  “Tell me about Ribera.”

  “What about him?”

  “Is he part of it? Is he part of your cell?”

  “No. He is what he is, a wonderful artist.”

  “No sympathy for the downtrodden worker? No affection for the workers’ paradise?”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “Of course he has sympathy. He thinks. If you think, how can you not have sympathy? I needed work that gave me a flexible schedule. I needed someone who would not question me. Someone he admires put in a word for me.”

  “Did he know Apfel?”

  She hesitated. “Yes. But not like that. He needed photographs taken of some of his work for a catalog. I introduced him to Apfel. He’s a good photographer. It’s his cover, but he’s good at it. And I needed an excuse to talk to him, to go to his shop.”

  That was the first lie he was sure of. She did not know that Orso had followed Ribera to the camera store, and how hard Ribera had worked to make sure that didn’t happen. Not the behavior of an innocent artist. How many lies had he not seen?

  “What’s in the photographs that makes them so important to the KGB?”

  “You should know. You have them.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. You told Perry Werth. He told Apfel.”

  “Before Apfel shot him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re here to get them.”

  “Yes.”

  “What if I told you they don’t exist?”

  “I know they exist. Apfel developed them. He saw them. Ingram stole the negatives and destroyed the prints so that he would have the only copies.”

  “They won’t do you any good.”

  “Of course they will; the man can’t continue if they come out. They’ll give us leverage.”

  “It’s not what I meant. I’ll show you.” He started to reach for his inside pocket.

  She picked up the gun. “Mike, don’t.”

  “It’s all right. I’ll do this slowly. My gun’s on the left. The photos are on the right.”

  “Be very careful.”

  He slowly drew the envelope from his inside pocket with two fingers and showed it to her.

  He got up and crossed the room, holding the envelope out.

  “All right.”

  He flipped it out and it landed on the floor at her feet. “Step back.”

  He went back to his chair and picked up his drink.

  She put the gun on the arm of her chair and reached for the envelope and opened it and looked at the photographs. She looked at Cassidy, puzzled. “What are these?” She fanned the four prints he had given her. The fifth, the only clear one, was still in his pocket. “Ingram’s photographs. Printed from his negatives.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He hid the negatives in his locker at the theater where he was dancing. He had them taped to the back wall. The locker was metal, and it was up against a steam pipe. The heat destroyed the negatives.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I want the negatives.”

  “Fine.”

  She held up the prints again. “There should be five. Apfel said Ingram stole five negatives.”

  “The one closest to the pipe melted. There was no image at all. I threw it away.”

  “We have experts. Perhaps they could raise something you didn’t.”

  “I don’t think so. The guy I used is the best. Do you think I’d take them to an amateur knowing how many people have died for them?”

  She looked down at the prints, and then looked at him blankly. He started to speak, but she held up her hand. “I have to think
.” She got up with the gun in one hand and the prints in the other and went to stand by the window.

  She leaned against the window frame with her weight on one leg and her hip cocked. She had put the prints on the windowsill, and now she worried her thumbnail with her teeth the way he had seen her do often when she was thinking. Her head was down, and her face was in profile, serious and beautiful, and he wanted to cross the room and take her in his arms and tell her not to worry. Get a grip. She’s a Russian spy with a .32 automatic, and you want to go comfort her?

  “How did you know I was onto you?”

  “What?”

  “You said you knew I was onto you. How did you know?”

  She turned away from the window to look at him and he saw her come back from wherever she had been. “Something changed in your lovemaking. You were holding back.”

  “I was holding back? I don’t even know your real name.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it?”

  “I never lied to you about how I feel.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Do you really have to ask?”

  “Yes.”

  She waited a long time. “I love you.”

  “Don’t tell me that lie.” She flinched. “You came after me because you thought I might have Ingram’s photos. Are you going to tell me it was coincidence that you moved into an apartment here that’s been vacant for months three days after Ingram died?” He could hear the bitterness in his voice.

  “No. Of course not. They thought if I could get close to you, I might find out what you knew. They were worried after you went back to the apartment. They were afraid you had found the photographs.”

  “And that I was going into business for myself?”

  “Yes.”

  “The capitalist urge?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So they sent you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Pillow talk rather than torture. Smaller chance of a heart attack.”

  “It wasn’t like that. I told you, I do what I want. Nobody makes me do something I don’t want to do.”

  “Right. Sure. It was just a small sacrifice for the good of the workers’ paradise. Fuck the cop. Get the photos. Long live the revolution. What a sucker I was. You searched the apartment, didn’t you? I came in one day and things weren’t quite right, but I ignored it. But that was you, wasn’t it? Jesus. Blind him with pussy. That sure worked.” He was angry that she had slipped the lock on his life so easily.

  She flinched as if slapped but said nothing.

  “And the night we went to Ribera’s party, you didn’t want me to go. Amado was there, and so was General Caldwell. Caldwell was a blackmail target. He was one of the men Ingram and Amado and the others roped in. You thought I might put it together. I wasn’t that smart.”

  Her face set into harder lines. “Think what you like. I want the negatives.”

  “They’re not here. They’re in the squad room. If you want them, you’ll have to go get them yourself. Or your masters will just have to be happy with the prints. And good luck to them.”

  “Please, Michael.”

  “That’s it. That’s all you get.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “All right.” She gestured with the pistol. “Go to the counter.”

  He carried his drink to the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. It was made of a long, heavy slab of black walnut supported by metal beams.

  “I want you to handcuff yourself to the beam.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I need some time. Not much, but some. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in an American prison. I’ll do what I have to do.”

  He believed her. He took the cuffs from his belt and closed one around his left hand, then crouched and embraced the beam that braced the counter and closed the other cuff around his right. Dylan brought him a chair so he would not have to sit on the floor. She tested the cuffs and then felt in his pockets and found the keys and tossed them across the room.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice had tears in it.

  He said nothing.

  She was about to say something else, but she shook her head, touched his face, and walked out without looking back. He heard the door to her apartment open and close, and then a few minutes later he heard it open and close again, and then her footsteps going down the stairs.

  He pushed the chair aside and got his shoulder under the slab and heaved up. It did not move. He pushed until his legs ached. He tried dropping down and slamming up, but that just hurt his shoulder. He looked under the counter. The beam was fixed to the bottom of the wood by four hex bolts with slotted tops. He grasped one between his index finger and thumb and tried to turn it, but it was in tight and did not move. Think.

  He pushed his belly in toward his hands and undid his belt buckle and pulled the belt free. The buckle was steel and the edge of it fit into the hex bolt slot, but he could not turn it. Leverage. That word again. Leverage will set you free.

  He pulled his arms to the top of the beam and raised his head above the level of the counter. A knife lay next to the plate of butter left out at breakfast. He pulled the cuffs up as far as they would go on the bracket and pushed himself up as far as he could on the counter. The cuffs bit into his wrists. He reached out with his chin and touched the knife handle.

  Careful. Get it. Get it. Don’t push it away. Gently.

  He pulled the knife toward the edge of the counter. It caught on a crack and slipped out from under his chin. He got it back, wiggled it. It moved. When he got it close to the edge, he stopped.

  Don’t drop it on the floor. If you drop it on the floor, you’ll never get it back. He pushed it around with his chin so the blade stuck out beyond the counter edge.

  Okay. Take it easy.

  Carefully he picked it up with his teeth, slid back onto the chair, and leaned in under the counter to transfer the knife to his hands. He slid the belt buckle edge back into the bolt slot and pushed the knife through the buckle. He held the buckle in the slot with one hand, and levered the knife with the other.

  Nothing happened.

  He took the knife out of the buckle and scraped at the paint around the head of the bolt until he had scraped it clean. Then he put the buckle back in the slot and the knife back in the buckle and pulled. The bolt suddenly gave, and he nearly dropped the buckle and knife.

  It took him more than half an hour to scrape the three other bolt heads free and to unscrew them. He put his shoulder under the counter slab to hold it, pulled the top of the bracket free of the wood, and slipped the cuffs over the top. The he pushed the bracket back in place to keep the counter end from falling and crossed quickly to the phone and dialed the number Crofoot had given him. It was answered on the fourth ring.

  “Yes?”

  “Cassidy. There are three of them in the cell, two besides the McCue woman. A sculptor named Carlos Ribera and a photographer and camera store owner named Rudi Apfel.”

  “He took the pictures?”

  “No. Ingram took them. Apfel developed them.”

  “Does she have them?”

  “No.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Cassidy realized his mistake. “I can’t be sure. I asked her. She said no. I believed her.”

  “Uh-huh. Addresses?”

  Cassidy gave them to him.

  “What happened?”

  Cassidy told him.

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “About forty-five minutes.”

  “Shit.”

  * * *

  Crofoot was at Ribera’s studio when Cassidy got there. Three young men in gray coveralls were cataloging the studio’s contents. Cassidy found Crofoot in the bedroom looking at the painting of the woman on the beach.

  “I thought it was a photograph at first.”

  “So did I.”

  “Will you look at that. It looks like she’s about to step out of th
e painting. I swear to god I’m getting a boner. She’s more alive than my wife.” Crofoot took a last look at the painting and turned away with a sigh and led Cassidy back into the big room.

  “What did you find at the camera store?” Cassidy asked.

  “The fire department. He torched the place.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Not much we can do. It’s a joke to talk about sealing the borders even if we had the manpower or the jurisdiction, which we don’t. Hell, you can walk across into Canada in a hundred different spots in New England. We’ll put some people out at Idlewild, but I don’t think they’re going to be that stupid.”

  “Did you know about Ribera?”

  “No. So that’s a bonus, thanks to you. Interesting that they’ve got a Cuban working for the KGB. We’ve got some assets working in Havana. They’ll keep a lookout for him.”

  “Apfel killed Ingram. And he killed Werth and Fisher to clean up loose ends. But he wasn’t the man in Ingram’s apartment when I went back, and he wasn’t the guy who tortured and killed Amado.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Amado was tortured in a different way. That’s one thing. And the guy I wrestled with in Ingram’s apartment was right-handed. I saw him sap down the super, Donovan. Definitely used his right hand. Apfel’s left-handed.”

  “Ah. Interesting. Any ideas?”

  “Either the Feds or you.”

  “Me? Please.”

  “Someone who works for you.”

  “You have a lurid idea of what we do. By the way, just curious, but why did you call me and not the FBI? You know it’s their jurisdiction. They’ve got a lot of people they could have thrown at this. Not that they could catch clap in a whorehouse. I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m just curious.”

  “Fuck them. They piss me off. And you were the one who let me in on the Dylan woman.” He told Crofoot what he thought he would believe, but he had a better reason, something he could not tell the CIA.

  “Fair enough. I guess we’re just going to have to assume these photos went to the grave with Ingram.” He watched Cassidy brightly.

  “I guess.”

  “Right, then. Well, thanks for the effort. It’s going to be a long war, and losing a minor skirmish like this one isn’t going to make a hell of a difference.” He waved at the men searching the room. “Besides, who knows? We may turn up a nugget or two here. And we’ll want to talk to you again. Debrief you. Everything she said that you remember. There’ll be something there she let slip.”