by Brad Latham
“Come on, Lockwood,” Manners said, exasperated. “Dzeloski’s got 10 percent of the company in some sort of employee trust fund. That’s not ownership.”
“Have you read the bylaws of the corporation?”
The flicker across Guy Manners’ face said no, and then something drooped there. Lockwood didn’t know what it was, but it was important to Manners personally to get him off this case.
“So, give,” said Manners.
“It’s set up so that the employees—while they are bona fide employees—actually do own the shares. So that while we at Transatlantic Underwriters harbor—”
“Cut it, Lockwood! What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we aren’t paying, Manners, till we make sure one of those monkeys didn’t engineer this theft for his own benefit, knowing that, say, the Air Force was going to find its bombsight didn’t work worth a damn.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Maybe so, but I’m paid to make sure we don’t pay crazy claims. That’s my job.”
“And my job is to make sure as few people know about this operation as possible, and nobody who doesn’t have to knows about this theft.”
“Embarrassing as hell to the government, isn’t it?” Lockwood asked.
“To the Treasury, it sure is. I don’t know or care about the rest of the government.”
“You’re not getting rid of me. Not unless I can conduct our investigation. Our policy gives—”
“—you the right to investigate, or you don’t have to pay. I read the thing.”
“That’s it,” Lockwood said. “Hey, Guy. Look—I don’t want to hold up the payment. I’m just as loyal as the next American. I don’t want the crazy Japs or Huns or Italians to get this piece of hardware, and I don’t think I’m holding up your investigation. But I’ve got a job to do. You’d do the same thing in my place. You helped me the other day, and that speeded things up. We can continue to work together.”
“I told Henry it would come to this.”
“Who’s Henry?” Lockwood asked.
Manners sighed. “My boss.” Manners stood up and grinned in a way that conveyed no humor. “How’d you like to become a T-man, Lockwood?”
Lockwood shook his head. “I wouldn’t like. How about calling me Bill?”
“Sure. Hold up your right hand, Bill.”
Lockwood felt confused, as if he were in a play and didn’t know the lines. “What’s this?”
“I want to swear you in as a special agent of the United States Treasury Department.”
“You what?”
“Hold up your hand.”
Lockwood, going along with the joke, found himself at the other end of an oath that took no more than a minute. Guy lowered his own right hand and stuck it out.
“Congratulations, Bill.”
They shook hands. Lockwood gave Manners an oblique look of suspicion.
“Do I get a badge?”
“Sure! It ought to be in the next pouch from Washington.”
“It might make things easier.”
“It certainly will make things easier for us,” Manners said.
Lockwood raised his eyebrows and asked, “How’s that?”
Manners grinned and headed for the door, “Henry figures that if you violate the 1932 Secrecy Act, Bill, he can have you shot. You might want to read it before you do any more talking to the folks back at your shop.”
Lockwood shook his head. “How’d you like to have two bosses—Uncle Sam and Mr. Gray?”
“If it comes to what I’d like, I’d rather not have any bosses. I suggest you watch yourself.” Manners stepped back into the room. “Tell you what you might do, Bill, since you got this thing about the folks who own the firm. You could find out all you can on Josef Dzeloski.”
“I could, huh? You’ve got something on him?”
“Let’s just say there are a few years of his life on which we can’t get any corroborating evidence for his whereabouts, and holes in a bio make us nervous.”
“Such as?”
“How come his baptismal certificates are missing in Croatia?”
Lockwood laughed. “Half of Croatia itself was missing after the war. I like Josef, I can’t see him behind this.”
“I like everybody, Lock—I mean, Bill,” Manners said. He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket. “Take a look at these French postcards.”
Lockwood took the envelope and looked at Manners.
“Open it,” Manners said. “I’m sure a suave guy like yourself has seen a few dirty pictures before.”
Inside were snapshots, dark and grainy, that showed a man who could have been Josef Dzeloski with a woman in a variety of sexual positions.
“Not much of a photographer,” Lockwood commented.
Guy grinned. “The constraints of the situation. The photographer didn’t want the photographee to know he was there.”
“I can imagine.” Lockwood put the pictures back into the envelope and handed it back to the T-man. “The girl doesn’t look so ‘dirty’ to me.”
“I’m glad you feel that way, Bill, because your first assignment as a T-man will be to get to know her.”
“Get to know her? What’s she have to do with all this?”
“That’s just what we’d like you to find out.”
“She’s not exactly my type.”
“Too bad.”
“My company—my boss—wouldn’t go for me fishing around in waters like that. No direct bearing on this case.”
“Remember? You’ve got two bosses now? Come down to the lab. I want to give you something new we’ve developed to aid our investigations.”
Something in Guy’s tone and smile made Lockwood wary. “What’s that?”
“Small radio transmitters,” Guy said. “We’d like you to plant two or three in her house, maybe her living room and bedroom. We’ll have guys in a radio truck nearby to tape what goes on there.”
Disgusted, Lockwood said, “Hey, you’re the government. The government doesn’t do this sort of thing.”
“Why not?” Guy asked, surprised.
Lockwood nodded glumly, “Yeah, why not? If you can’t see it, I could never explain it to you.”
“What are the long lines for?” Lockwood asked Guy. On the table in the empty lab of Area B lay three radio devices, each the size of three packs of Camels with a five foot length of wire trailing across the table.
“The aerial,” Guy said. “It’s got to stretch away from the device, or it won’t transmit the signal.”
“And keep this little grill uncovered?” Lockwood confirmed.
“Yep, that’s the mike. Just tape it under the bed, say, with the grill to the outside of the stanchion, and trail the wire across the bottom of a bed slat.”
“Look, Guy, this isn’t my line.”
“This isn’t the first time you’ve dealt with a call girl, is it, Lockwood?”
“I thought is was Bill and Guy we were calling each other?”
“We were, till you got prissy on me.”
“What am I supposed to say to this woman, to get these things in her living room or kitchen?”
“Don’t forget the bedroom.”
“I haven’t”
“What does any man say to a woman like this to get into her bedroom?”
Lockwood looked at him sharply. “You give her ten dollars. It’s not my style.”
“So, you got a new style.”
They just looked at each other. Lockwood felt a trickle of-anger turn to a rush.
“Get one of your other guys to do it, Manners.”
Guy sucked on his lip in a meditative way. “Suppose I have the Marines lock you up for insubordination?”
“You wouldn’t get away with that.”
“Of course not. But it would take you a while to wiggle out.”
They just looked at each other for a few moments. Lockwood felt no give to Manners’ position, no smile, no blink, no softening of his face.
�
��You’re serious, aren’t you?” Lockwood asked.
“Very serious. My guys don’t look as, let’s call it ‘smooth’ as you do, Bill. Tell Barbara you’re—”
“Barbara?”
“Barbara Wilson, the glamour girl in the pics.” Lockwood nodded. “Tell her you’re a businessman, out looking to buy land for investment. You look the type. Tell her you got her name from George Captree.”
“Who’s he?”
“The guy who gave you her name.”
“There is a George Captree?” Lockwood asked.
“Of course! And will she be glad to see you when you use his name!”
“Give me more, Manners. What’s going on here?”
The T-man reflected a few seconds before answering. “I guess it can’t hurt to let you in on this. We think she’s a spy for the Nazis, a sleeper agent.”
“Out here? What for?”
“Northstar’s out here, isn’t it?”
Lockwood couldn’t counter this.
Manners continued, “We think she’s in the German-American Bund. Either accidentally or on purpose, Josef D. could be passing information on to glamor-puss during their little nighttime trysts. I want that confirmed or denied.”
“You had this on your mind all along, using me for this, didn’t you?” Lockwood asked.
Manners smirked and sucked on his cigarette. “Not so much ‘all along,’ chump, but it’s been getting firmer and firmer—the more stubborn you got about keeping your dick in places where an insurance dick’s dick don’t belong.”
“Give me the stupid things,” Lockwood said, obviously irritated, as he reached for the listening devices.
“Whoa! I got to show you how to make them work, hot shot. Hell’s bells, you get it all wrong and you’ll just have to go back and reset them all over again.”
On his way through Patchogue to Islip, Lockwood stopped at the South Shore Florist and ordered a dozen rosebuds and had the florist pack them in white lace and ferns. On the card he wrote:
Myra,
What a wonderful evening! Going to be tied up for a couple of days, will call soon.
Bill
“Can you have someone deliver them about six o’clock tonight?” Lockwood asked.
“Oh, yes sir,” the florist replied, “whenever you say.”
Across the street in the drugstore, Lockwood called ahead.
“You’re a friend of George?” the nimble voice asked him over the phone. “Sure, come on over.”
She had a rich contralto voice, well modulated and sure of itself. Lockwood grinned in spite of his reluctance about taking the assignment. It might be fun after all.
“What do you like to drink, Barbara?” Lockwood asked.
“I like something to drink,” she replied before laughing heartily at her own joke. “Why don’t you bring over a bottle of anisette, Mr. Lockwood?”
“Make it Bill.”
Her rich laugh again. “Sure thing, Bill. I’ve some wonderful peach and cherry tarts, and it’s that time of the day when coffee, tarts, and anisette go well together—if you’re at all like your friend Georgie?”
“I’ll bring the anisette,” replied Lockwood.
Neither of the two liquor stores in Patchogue had a bottle of anisette, and the one liquor store in Islip had only a couple of bottles. Lockwood thought the sallow proprietor looked at him strangely, and wondered if Barbara Wilson was his only customer for the liqueur.
Barbara Wilson lived at the end of Moffit Lane in a small clapboard house that was set back almost to the point of invisibility behind great mounds of hedges and pine trees. He carried the bottle in one hand and his attaché case, in which he’d packed the three radio transmitters, in the other. Nowhere in the neighborhood did he see the panel truck that Guy Manners had told him would be recording the conversations broadcast by the small transmitters.
Barbara Wilson was a big-boned woman with raven-colored hair whose mouth was a red gash of lipstick. She greeted him with a boisterous, “So, Georgie’s buddy! Come in, come in!”
Putting the bottle into her hands, Lockwood gave her his most dazzling smile and doffed his snap-brim hat.
“Gee, what a terrific little place you’ve got here,” he said.
With a flutter of silk housedress she led him into the living room, which was filled with plush sofas and little tables on which stood small porcelain statues of children, cats, and elves.
“I love it,” she said. She led him to the seating area at the far end of the living room, which looked out onto a small garden filled with spring flowers. “Let’s sit here,” she said, and Lockwood saw a small feast of pastries and whipped cream and a large silver pot of what he assumed to be coffee, with steam coming from its spout.
“Sort of like teatime in England,” Lockwood said. He didn’t normally eat at this time of day, and he wasn’t that hot for sweets, but it seemed best to play along.
“Let me take your attaché case,” she said and reached for it.
Lockwood gave a start.
“Oh, you won’t be needing your work in here,” she said and gave one of her rich laughs again. “I’m surprised you even brought your work with you.”
“I’m looking for land out here,” he said. “I want to keep my eye on my papers.” Lockwood grinned and winked. “Competitors, you know.”
She laughed again, a rich throaty sound that said she did indeed know the villainy of competition. “Why don’t you just keep it by your side, if that makes you feel better.” She pointed to the end of the silk-covered sofa. “Sit there, and let me fill your plate and pour you coffee.”
Lockwood sat where he was instructed to, which gave him a breathtaking view of her smooth curving breasts as Barbara filled his plate and poured the slow liqueur and coffee into their cups, a view he was sure had been finely calculated. He smiled to himself and settled more into the sofa. He would have to pay her something, he mused, and of course Mr. Gray wouldn’t allow him to put down its real purpose—perhaps he could get away with “purchase of information” on the expense voucher.
Barbara, with a rustle and a flounce, sat demurely for such a big woman next to him on the sofa, and as they ate the sour tarts, the sweetened whipped cream, and the spiced coffee, they had a spirited conversation about the prices of farm land, a subject that sobered Barbara and about which she displayed detailed knowledge.
The white phone on the small covered table in the corner rang, and she rose, ignoring it, to excuse herself and take the call in the next room. She closed the door softly behind her, and faintly Lockwood heard her laugh. From its heartiness he judged she would be at least a minute or so, and working against the few seconds he was sure he had, he whipped out one of the little transmitters and turned on its switch and quickly shoved it under the hem of the sofa cover, pulling out the wire aerial as far as it would stretch.
He had no sooner straightened up when he heard the door opening, and he reached for the coffee cup to cover his swift movements.
“Could you pour me another cup?” he asked.
“Of course I could! You like my café anisette, do you?”
“This is wonderfully relaxing, being here,” he replied.
“I’ve turned the bell on that damn phone off,” she said. Her voice had lowered to what in any other woman would have been a purr, but in her it came across as a low insistant roar.
Lockwood smiled at her, wondering how hard this creature could crush a man if she were displeased while embracing him, for she really was a big woman—taller than he was by a couple inches, with no fat in the neck or the thick wrists.
Lockwood was struggling to figure out the right next move when she solved the problem by turning on the little Victrola.
He asked, “Would you perhaps like to dance a bit?”
“I’d love to!” she said.
In no time at all they were holding each other tight, and she bumped up against him in a provocative way. He encouraged her by slowly moving against her. She compli
mented him on his dancing, and he told her how gracefully she moved. She pulled him more tightly to her, and he wondered if she was going to lift him from the floor. He slid his hand down below her waist till it rested on the large mound of flesh of her rear end, which undulated in a strong firm way. She made a humming sound of approval in his ear, which he interpreted to mean he should continue with his exploration of her firm derriere, and subsequent exploration produced more “ummmmm’s,” confirming his interpretation. He began to lose himself in her fleshy sensuality, aware only of her large breasts, her floral perfume, her hot full breaths on his neck, and the way her proud derriere danced against his hand.
They continued on like this for three record changes, and Lockwood was becoming aroused to heights of sensuality and sexuality.
“You’re making me so hot,” Barbara rumbled into his right ear. “Could you just slip this housedress off me?”
She stood there swaying as his hands fumbled at the loose knot at her waist, and then the robe opened. She opened her arms enough, and he slipped it off, catching glimpses in all this work of broad expanses of smooth flesh, the two large pink nipples, and the blackest of bushes below a surprisingly smooth stomach for a woman of her size. He didn’t feel quite right about all this—getting steamed up in order to trick the woman and planting the transmitters about the house—but on the other hand, once in the saddle and on the horse, mightn’t he as well enjoy the ride?
Naked, she embraced him, and they continued to dance. Lockwood couldn’t quite figure her out. She wasn’t so much a prostitute as a lady of easy virtue, and could she somehow be in the employ of some foreign power, giving her the money and leisure for all this horsing around in the afternoon?
“That’s so much better,” Barbara breathed into Lock-wood’s right ear. “I hate dancing with clothes on. You can’t be free.”
And she did seem freer. She swayed in a manner that showed she was still more caught up in the violins and clarinets, and their movements back and forth became sexual. Her body became slick with a film of sweat.
Lockwood too heated up, and he gave way to her firm fingers as they took off his jacket, then his necktie, and it was natural to kick off his shoes as she kicked off the black high heels that were her only attire. She looked at him shyly yet grinned savagely. Her fingers opened his crisp shirt front and her lips planted little kisses, quite dainty for such a big woman, on his chest. Any last resistance or worry about obscure European diseases or her slipping some gut-eating poison to him had vanished. Hardly had he recovered from her lips making little tracks across his chest and stomach than her fingers had unbuckled his belt and slipped his pants to his calves.