Maxie Mainwaring, Lesbian Dilettante

by Monica Nolan

  At eight forty A.M. she called the office. “Where on earth are you?” demanded Lucille, as if she were an hour late instead of ten minutes. “The work is piled up on your desk! You have a Lovelorn column due today!”

  Darn, she’d meant to work on it over the weekend, but she’d spent all her spare time reading Stella’s stuff. “I’ve been held up,” Maxie improvised, “family emergency. Tell Hal I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  “Mr. Hapgood isn’t going to be happy,” Lucille warned before she hung up. Maxie hardly heard her. Lon was coming out of the Seneca Hotel. She looked more boyish than ever in gray slacks and a navy-blue windbreaker. In one hand she carried a canvas bag.

  At last, some action! And Maxie would bet Loon Lake Lodge that Lon was taking the week’s payoffs to the big boss!

  Lon boarded the bus, and Maxie breathed a sigh of relief—last night’s taxi had made a big dent in her pocketbook. Yet a little later she wished Lon had grabbed a taxi. Following Lon last night had been easy as pie compared to today, during the morning rush hour. The mob girl unexpectedly jumped off the bus at Herring Drive, and ran across the street to climb aboard the Linden Lane Express, with Maxie chasing breathlessly behind.

  This is silly, Maxie thought as she squeezed aboard. Now we’re heading back the way we just came. She looked at Lon, over the sunglasses she’d slipped on. To Maxie’s astonishment, Lon pulled out a compact! She peered into it, turning it slowly from side to side.

  She thinks she’s being followed, Maxie thought. Has she spotted me?

  She didn’t have time to speculate. Lon was on the move again, swinging off the bus, bag in hand, almost before it came to a halt. With Maxie still on her tail, she plunged into Central Station.

  Later, Maxie realized how well Lon had timed it. A trainload of hurrying commuters had just disembarked from the Muskrat Local. They came at Maxie like a wave, and the amateur detective was swept away while Lon disappeared in the sea of suits. She even dressed for camouflage, Maxie realized, searching the navy-suited crowd. For a split second she thought she saw Lon’s blond head, bobbing toward the public restrooms. But when she dashed into the ladies, there was no Lon. The men’s room yielded nothing, except red-faced businessmen.

  Unwilling to admit she’d lost her quarry, Maxie circled the vast hall, trying to catch the scent. As she worked her way through the oncoming crowd, Maxie realized she wasn’t alone. There were other figures, also going against the morning tide. Shadow shapes, who seemed to vanish when she turned to look at them. The follower was herself being followed!

  But by whom? Maxie left the terminal and paused at the corner to admire some shoes in a store window. In the reflection, a woman slowed and then strolled past. When Maxie moved on, a man turned away from a newstand.

  Two of them, Maxie thought. Time to turn the tables.

  She headed for Grunemans, not bothering to take any more clandestine peeks at her pursuers. She hurried through the strolling shoppers, as if she’d suddenly remembered an engagement. She wanted her pursuers hot on her heels.

  She burst into Grunemans, flew up the escalator, and was almost running by the time she reached Ladies’ Lingerie. Snatching up a panty girdle, she darted toward the dressing rooms. She ignored the cubicle doors lining the little corridor and opened the one at the end marked PRIVATE. She and Pamela had once shared a coffee break in this employee cloakroom, with its shelves of pantyhose overstock. Now she peered out the crack.

  She didn’t have long to wait. A few seconds later, a woman’s head poked cautiously around the corner. The girl had covered her dark hair with a silk scarf and her intense eyes with sunglasses. But under the Mata Hari getup Maxie recognized Kitty Coughlin. She felt a wave of annoyance. All this rigamarole only to net a snooping sociologist!

  She flung open the door. “Boo!” she said sarcastically.

  Her fifth-floor neighbor jumped a foot and whirled around. A wicked-looking gun leaped into her hand. She pointed it at Maxie.

  Chapter 23

  The G-Woman

  “In!” Kitty waved her weapon at an empty dressing room, and Maxie obediently backed in. Had she pushed the repressed girl too far? But no—that wasn’t the wild-eyed look of a girl who’d gone over the edge, but the cold calculation of a killer.

  “You dirty crook!” Maxie said hotly. “You don’t dare kill me in Grunemans department store! One shot and you’ll be surrounded by salesgirls!”

  Kitty’s eyes widened. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said shortly. She slipped the gun into a shoulder holster concealed by her periwinkle cardigan. “This isn’t a hit—I’m with the FBI.”

  There was a tap at the door. “Are you finding everything all right?” chirped the salesgirl. Maxie opened the door and thrust out the panty girdle. “I need this down a size.” When she’d gotten rid of the intruder, she turned back to Kitty.

  “First you’re a psych student, then a sociologist, now a G-woman. Seems to me like you’re heading for an identity crisis, Kitty! What’s behind the multiple masquerade?”

  The federal agent seated herself on the triangular bench built into one corner of the cubicle. “My name is Kathy O’Connell,” she told Maxie crisply. “I’ve been undercover for the Bureau since May, as part of Operation Smorgasbord. How do you know Yolanda Laney, aka Lon?”

  “I don’t really. I just keep running into her around town,” Maxie admitted. “What’s Operation Smorgasbord?”

  “It’s a probe into mob activity here in Bay City. Why were you following Lon this morning?”

  “I wasn’t following her.” Maxie decided to deny everything.

  “My partner and I saw you transfer buses when she did. And you followed her into the terminal.”

  “Why were you following her?” Maxie asked.

  “I’ll ask the questions!” the agent said sharply. “Where were you last night? Why didn’t you return to the Arms?”

  Maxie rolled her eyes. “Really, Kitty! You’ve lived next door to me long enough to know that there’s nothing unusual about me staying out all night!”

  Kitty, or rather Kathy, blushed. “Please cooperate, Maxie. This is government business.”

  “I will if you tell me what’s going on, and why you have two false identities instead of one!”

  Kathy unbent a trifle. “It’s a technique I invented called the double blind,” she explained with a touch of pride. “If someone got suspicious of the student story, I had the sociologist to fall back on.”

  It was clever, Maxie admitted. It had worked on her. “But why are you interested in the Magdalena Arms? There are no mobsters there—just a bunch of hardworking career girls!”

  “We’re interested in Francine’s,” Kathy told her. “There’s a new mob in town, taking over the extortion rackets. Everywhere else the transition has been smooth—no one on Pingst Street has made a peep. But they hit a rough patch with Francine Flicka. She even went to the police—”

  “The police are in their pay!” Maxie cried. “Look at this—” She brought out her battered copy of the Loon Lake Gazette. “I saw this officer accepting a payoff after raiding Francine’s, with my own eyes.”

  “Did you see who made the payoff?” Kathy questioned.

  “I—it was dark in the alley,” said Maxie weakly. She wasn’t ready to finger Lon until she found out what the attractive butch was up to.

  Kathy’s intense green eyes bored into the guilty girl. “The mob is a cancer, feeding off healthy American society,” she said forcefully. “And we’re going to cut it out, even if it means taking normal cells with it!” Fire flashed in her eyes.

  Does she mean me? Maxie wondered. Am I a normal cell?

  “We’ve been tracking the gangs of Bay City for quite a while. People believe there will always be criminals to cater to society’s illicit vices, but they don’t realize how deeply entrenched the mob is in every strata of Bay City life. It started with the great Scandinavian immigration of the last century. Sure, most of the immigrants were ord
inary folk, looking for a better life, a place to practice their traditional crafts making simple furniture and cheerful, brightly colored textiles. But criminal elements came over as well. The Larsens, the Olssens, the Swensons—Bay City’s top three crime families all got their start back then.”

  Maxie listened, fascinated. This was not the kind of history the Daughters of the American Pioneers highlighted in their living picture pageants!

  “The Larsens quickly dominated gambling.” The G-woman ticked the three families off on her fingers. “The Olssens made money manufacturing glögg in illegal stills in the North Woods. The Swensons were specialists in the shakedown—collecting protection money from ignorant immigrants and selling them ‘services’ they were actually entitled to. After the war they extended their activities to the docks, offering ‘protection’ from their own thieves! But they’ve grown weak since Bill ‘the Big Swede’ Swenson died. The hit on his son Sven is just one sign someone new is taking over the Swenson family’s operations—the question is, who?”

  The crime fighter ran a hand through her hair in frustration. “It was hard enough getting a handle on the current clans with their secretive ways and the confusing alternate spellings—Olsen, Olson, Olsson, and even Olsin!” She illustrated by spelling the names on the dressing-room mirror with her lipstick. “But whoever the new boss in town is, he’s protected himself so well we don’t even know his name. We’ve been on the case for months without getting a lead. We don’t even know if he’s Swedish, or Norwegian, or something else entirely!”

  Maxie wondered if criminology might be her true calling. Hadn’t Miss Watkins mentioned that as a possible penchant? She could listen to Kathy explain the intricacies of Bay City’s underworld all day.

  “But you still haven’t said why you were following me this morning,” she recalled. “After all”—she smiled—“I’m not connected to any of these crime families.”

  “Actually you are,” Kathy told her tersely. “Mainwaring is an anglicization of Mänvaarik, isn’t it?”

  “Well, sure,” said Maxie. “We’ve never hidden our Finnish roots! But that doesn’t mean we’re criminals. You said yourself that the majority of immigrants were honest.”

  “Your great-grandfather, Markus Mänvaarik, had ties to both the Olssens and the Larsens,” Kathy told her. “Gambling was popular among the logging crews, and the rumor is he got a kickback from the games of Gurka that were played in his camps. And he actively protected the production of illegal glögg. In fact, he purchased the land around Loon Lake with money borrowed from the Olssens.”

  “Those were frontier days,” protested Maxie. “He probably needed the glögg to pacify the Indians or something. You can’t hold Great-grandpa to modern-day standards.”

  “We have to look at all the angles,” Kathy retorted. Inadvertently her eyes flickered over Maxie’s figure, and she busied herself, wiping the lipstick writing off the mirror.

  Maxie pounced on the G-woman’s weak spot.

  “Student, sociologist, or agent, I’m still wondering: Which side of the Sapphic fence do you fall on?”

  “I’m at Francine’s strictly on business,” Kathy said stiffly.

  “Is it all business and no play?” Maxie murmured. “You know, you’re like an onion. I keep peeling away layers, but I’m not sure I’ve gotten to the core.” She watched the flush that rose from Kathy’s Peter Pan collar and stained her scarlet.

  “Onions can sting,” the G-woman warned through trembling lips.

  “Peeling this one hasn’t made me cry,” purred Maxie. She reached forward and fingered the handle of the gun under Kathy’s armpit. “Would you really have used this on me?”

  Kathy flinched and grabbed Maxie’s hand. “That’s government property. I know all about you and your madcap ways, Maxie Mainwaring—I’ve read your file. But this time, you’re playing with fire!”

  “I’m a Campfire Girl from way back,” Maxie assured her. “I know how to stoke the flames and put them out.”

  Kathy’s breath was coming in short bursts and her eyes were shooting sparks.

  I really shouldn’t, Maxie thought, as she’d thought a hundred times before, leaning toward Kathy, whose lips were already parted in anticipation. But the stormy eyes and willing lips bespoke a conflict Maxie simply had to help resolve.

  She was so close the G-woman’s warm breath fanned Maxie’s face, and still the courageous crime fighter didn’t shrink away. Maxie’s lips brushed Kathy’s and . . .

  “I have your panty girdle,” the salesgirl said as she knocked. Kathy jerked away. “I brought a couple sizes so you’d be sure of finding the right one.”

  Maxie bit her lips in frustration. Damn Grunemans and their personal service policy! “Just leave it on the doorknob,” she called.

  Kathy was on her feet before the salesgirl’s footsteps had trailed away. “I’ll leave first,” she told Maxie. “You follow after a few minutes. It’s better if we’re not seen together.”

  “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” Maxie couldn’t resist taunting.

  “Keep what I’ve told you to yourself,” Kathy ordered, ignoring Maxie’s jab. “Or I’ll have you taken into cusody for your own protection.”

  “You sure know how to turn on the charm,” muttered Maxie. After Kathy was gone, she sat thinking.

  If they’re so interested in Lon, she wondered, why do they have a file on me?

  Chapter 24

  Lounge Lizard Lothario

  After a refreshing facial at Countess Elfi’s and another cup of coffee, Maxie headed to the magazine’s offices, feeling virtuous. Her sleepless night and heart-stopping morning certainly entitled her to a sick day, but her Lovelorn column was due, and Maxie was putting Polish first.

  She felt a little guilty for not telling her gang-busting neighbor everything she knew, but then Kitty/Kathy hadn’t been completely candid either. First there was that file; and then, the more Maxie thought about it, the more she realized Kathy wouldn’t have had much time to investigate Francine’s, the way she’d kept popping up wherever Maxie went that summer. Why had the crime fighter lingered in the lounge, watching Maxie and Dolly play Ping-Pong, while this new mob took over Swenson’s extortion rackets? Did Kathy really think Great-grandpa Mainwaring’s mob connections had somehow been handed down to Maxie’s generation?

  “Hal’s furious!” Lucille told Maxie the minute she spotted the tardy girl. “He said he wanted to see you as soon as you came in!” Her fellow assistant hovered nervously as Maxie tried to smooth the wrinkles out of the uncrushable seersucker, whose wrinkle-free reputation was undeserved.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in!” was Hal’s acid greeting when she entered his office, still swatting at her skirt ineffectually.

  “I’m sorry, Hal—”

  “You’re skating on very thin ice, young lady. Polish is not a debutante dance you can waltz in and out of depending on your mood. I won’t tolerate any more absences or tardiness! One second after eight thirty A.M., and you’re out!

  Maxie winced. She’d hoped Hal hadn’t noticed what a hard time she’d had adjusting to the early hours. She racked her fatigue-fogged brain for an excuse that would appease her wrathful boss, but came up empty. “It won’t happen again,” was the best she could do.

  “Cross your heart and hope to die?” Maxie flinched at her boss’s unsuspected sarcastic side. “Start with a pot of coffee. Then I want to look at your latest Lovelorn column. Larry Lathrop got in last night, and he’ll be here any minute.”

  “Larry Lathrop—here?” Maxie squeaked. “I thought he wasn’t coming until next week!” She had picked a few letters to feature, but she hadn’t even roughed out a response!

  “I guess he forgot to call you and consult.” Maxie winced again. “Do me a favor and don’t go all bobby-soxer. Try to make a better impression on him than you have on me.”

  Maxie returned to her desk and pulled out the Lovelorn folder. The answers never take very long, she
told herself. The only problem was her typing. Maybe Lucille would help her out. She looked across the room hopefully, but the competent assistant was thin-lipped with disapproval.

  “People have been calling you all morning,” She picked up a sheaf of message slips. “Stella McSweeney—personal. Pamela Prendergast—no message. Doris Watkins—urgent.” She dropped them on Maxie’s desk with a sniff. “Just in case you forgot, I’m Mr. Hapgood’s assistant, not yours!”

  Maybe Larry wouldn’t mind reading her handwriting, Maxie thought. Oops! She jumped up from her desk. Coffee! She’d almost forgotten, and she needed it more than Hal.

  She dashed to the little kitchen and set the coffee brewing, heaping in extra grounds for additional oomph. Sneaking into an empty office, where Lucille wouldn’t overhear her making personal calls, Maxie dialed Pamela.

  “Where have you been?” Pamela burst out. “We had a date last night! I’ve been worried sick!”

  Maxie framed last night’s adventure in a way her career-minded girlfriend could comprehend. “I had a lead on a story for Polish,” she explained. “Literally!”

  “Couldn’t you have at least called?”

  “Pamela, I can’t explain right now—I’m up to my ankles in hot water here at work, and if someone hears me making private calls, I’ll be sunk. ’Bye!”

  She glanced at one of the questions she had picked. My husband is gone all day, and I feel so isolated and alone in our house with just a one-year-old who can’t even speak the English language. I know I ought to be happy, but I’m not. What can I do to change my attitude?

  Hobbies can help, Maxie began. Why had she stuck in one of the depressed housewife letters this week? They were always hard.

  She put her pencil down and dialed Miss Watkins.

  “Maxie—I’m terribly sorry to disturb you at work”—Miss Watkins sounded breathless with excitement—“but Mrs. Spindle-Janska is here on a flying visit and she wants to speak to you—may I put her on?”

  “I guess so.” Maxie scribbled, Friends—clubs—join a church group.