The two men were talking now, and the younger one nodded and laughed. He went over to sit on the older one’s barstool, raising his hand to signal the bartender. The older man turned to Annie with a broad smile, which she returned awkwardly. He led her over to the headwaiter, who looked in his reservation book, nodded, and brought them inside.
Annie took off her coat and beret and laid them on the green leather seat of a private banquette. Harriet’s view of the man was obscured by the curve of the 38
bench—she could see just the top of his curly head—but she had a clear angle on Annie, who seemed to be, uncharacteristically, at a loss for words. She glanced at the bar, where the younger man had taken off his woven jacket and gotten a Bloody Mary.
Harriet’s imagination had gone into overdrive. Why would Annie go out to lunch with a man more than twice her age, and who was that guy at the bar? A bodyguard trying to pass himself off as a surfer dude? Why would the older man need a bodyguard?
Maybe Annie was pulling a double cross, pretending to lie but actually telling the truth when “Cassandra” dropped all those dark hints about the Witness Protection Program.
Maybe the Feigenbaums weren’t really her uncle and aunt but Mafia hit men maintaining an unlikely cover as Upper East Side Jewish doctors.
The headwaiter had returned to his station and was glaring indignantly at the girl whose nose was now pressed to his window. Harriet took a step back and realized that the turbaned Sikh at the corner newsstand was staring at her as well. I need a cover myself, she thought.
She looked up and down the block and fixed on a Greek coffee shop on the opposite corner. There was a row of small tables along the front window, just right for a stakeout. Harriet went to the crosswalk and waited as cabs and delivery vans inched down the crowded street. Someone was playing a radio so loudly that she could feel the bass throbbing through the closed windows: a rock ‘n’ roll version of “Silent Night.” The Greek waitress gave Harriet the evil eye every time she passed, even though Harriet was a legitimate paying customer. True, she had bought only one Coke and had sat at this table for more than an hour, scrawling notes in her notebook and looking up sharply whenever the door of the seafood restaurant swung open, but there was no law against drinking your soda too slowly.
A balding waiter slouched by with a tray full of sizzling shish kebabs that smelled richly of garlic, and Harriet realized she had skipped lunch. She wished she’d brought more than a couple of dollars and a handful of change when she left her house. She wrote in her notebook, DEVELOP EMERGENCY SPY FUND.
A movement across the street caught her attention. The surfer was holding the door open for Annie and the curly-haired man, who was toting a Bloomingdale’s shopping bag. When all three of them stood on the curb, the curly-haired man set the shopping bag down, reached into his wallet, and handed the surfer a bill. Harriet squinted but couldn’t see how big the payoff was. Ten dollars? Twenty? Five hundred? She tossed a tip onto her table and went to the door, being careful to pull up her hood in case Annie should look her way.
The curly-haired man reached into the shopping bag and took out a lavender box, the size of a shoe box but flatter. As he gave it to Annie, the surfer dude suddenly lunged onto East Seventy-second Street, shooting his arm up to flag down a cab. The curly-haired man gave Annie a hasty hug, kissed the top of her head, and shepherded her to the cab. He closed the door after her, leaned down toward the window, and waved.
Then he stood at the curb and watched as the cab pulled away.
39
Emboldened by Annie’s departure, Harriet went to the crosswalk. He won’t recognize me, she figured, and I want a closer look. When the light clicked to WALK, she started across the street and realized that the curly-haired man was heading right toward her. She dipped her head, pretending to look for something in her backpack. As he passed her, she zipped it back up with a sigh of frustration, as if she’d forgotten something important, and turned around, following him down the stairs to the downtown-bound subway.
Harriet hesitated a moment, weighing her parents’ directive against riding the subway alone against her intense curiosity. Curiosity won. She went through the turnstile and stood on the platform a few poles away from the man. His coat was cut of a butterscotch-colored cashmere that looked very expensive. His shoes were well shined.
But his face didn’t look like a gangster’s—at least, not the gangsters in movies. He had blue eyes and a long nose with slightly flared nostrils; his unruly curls looked as if they’d been blown by a sea breeze. If she had run into him at the yacht club in Water Mill, Long Island, where her family spent summers, she wouldn’t have batted an eye.
The downtown train pulled into the station. The man got on quickly and took a seat next to a couple of black teenage girls with enormous gold earrings. Harriet went in through the same car’s far door and positioned herself at a center pole. Only when the train closed its doors and lurched out of the station did it occur to her that the man might be riding to Brooklyn or Queens, maybe even to Kennedy Airport. I’ll stay on the case for a couple more stops, she thought, feeling her heart pound, and then I’ll decide.
Luckily, he got off at Lexington and Fifty-first Street, a transfer stop Harriet knew well from weekend excursions with Ole Golly. Was he going to the Museum of Modern Art? It didn’t seem likely, but no good spy ever ruled anything out without firsthand proof. She followed him at a discreet distance, pinning her gaze on the sleeve of his butterscotch coat as she stayed behind two German students with oversized backpacks.
They arrived at the E train platform.
The man took a seat on an empty bench and reached into his coat pocket, unfolding a long piece of paper and peering at it with a studious frown. That’s a clue, thought Harriet. I’ve got to get closer and see what he’s reading. She noticed a garbage can next to the bench and riffled through her pockets, searching for something to throw away. There was a wadded-up page that she’d torn from her spy notebook when she’d misspelled a word. Perfect, she thought. All I have to do now is look casual.
She took a deep breath. An easy saunter, she thought, your basic who-cares-about-anything stroll. She balanced the crumpled-up page on the palm of her hand and strolled toward the trash can, slowing down as she passed the bench. The man was squinting at a railroad schedule. Of course, thought Harriet, he’s on his way to Penn Station. The getaway! She was so thrilled by her spying skills that she nearly forgot to throw out the paper she had in her hand.
Penn Station was vast. Harriet had been to the interstate railway station just once, to see Ole Golly off on the Montrealer, and the thought of navigating that huge maze of tunnels and crossing the vaulting concourse with its crush of commuters and fast-flipping destination signs, without her hand safely clutched in her mother’s, was simply too daunting. I’m twelve, she thought. I’ve done all that a spy of my years can be expected to 40
do, maybe more.
Anyway, she reassured herself, I’m supposed to be spying on Annie.
An E train clattered into the station. The curly-haired man stuffed the schedule back into his pocket and went to the edge of the platform. The double doors opened and people poured out. Harriet watched the man’s back as he stepped on board, still lugging the Bloomingdale’s bag. She hated to give up the chase, but as soon as she got to her room, she could write every detail down in her notebook. The thought made her happy.
This was a seven-page day, at least. Maybe she’d set a new record.
“Stand clear of the closing doors,” a conductor warned. The double doors hissed shut and the train gathered speed. Harriet stood still and watched till its taillights left the station. Then she turned and walked toward the train that would bring her back uptown, and home.
41
Harriet woke up the next day with her mind full of questions. She looked at the flashlight on her night table, which the night before had flashed its usual nine-thirty semaphore, just as if nothing were different. Everything�
�s different, she thought. Her parents had been upset with her lengthy midday disappearance (though not as upset as they would have been if they’d known where she had gone, she consoled herself). Harriet had had enough presence of mind to place a call to Janie, urging her to say, if and when questioned, that they’d been together.
“Where were you really?” Janie had asked.
“That’s classified. Urgent spy business.”
“Oh.” Janie’s voice flattened. “That.” But she had agreed to hold up the story, so Harriet’s only transgression was not having let her parents know in advance where she’d be for three hours. For this, she’d been grounded, and had to spend all day in her house doing homework, no TV, no phone calls. It would be a dull Sunday.
Good time to catch up on my notebooks, she thought. Sometimes Harriet liked to sit down and reread a volume or two to see if she’d failed to report anything of significance. Now she resolved to go all the way back to the first time she’d met Annie, aka Rosarita Sauvage.
Harriet brushed her teeth, dressed, and went down to the kitchen for breakfast.
Morning light slanted in from the street-level windows in front and the snow-covered garden in back. She poured cornflakes into her favorite bowl and reached into the fruit bowl for a banana. On the counter beside it, she spotted a letter in Ole Golly’s unmistakable back-slanted handwriting, with the dark and light strokes of a chiseled calligraphy pen. It must have arrived in yesterday’s mail, she thought. Why didn’t anyone tell me? She ripped the envelope open and read.
Dear Harriet, Ole Golly had written,
I can no more explain falling in love than I could explain how to breathe. Both are involuntary and both are essential. Poets have pondered the subject for centuries.
Mr. H. L. Mencken edited a superb dictionary of quotations, grouped by topic rather than author. The entries for love run a full sixteen pages. I will leave you with just this one, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Whoever lives true life, will love true love.” As ever,
Catherine Golly Waldenstein
P.S. Promise me that you won’t grow up too fast. I want our baby to meet you 42
when you’re still my Harriet.
Harriet read the letter three times before she poured milk on her cornflakes. That’s really no help, she thought, lifting her spoon to her lips. It certainly doesn’t explain Annie’s older man.
Annie met her the next morning in front of her door. “I called you yesterday and your mom wouldn’t let you talk. What’s up with that, H’spy?”
“I forgot to leave her a note when I went to Janie’s on Saturday.” Annie shrugged. “At least she was worried about you. My mother wouldn’t have noticed that I was gone. She’d be too busy writing some play.” Harriet’s jaw dropped. “Your mother’s a playwright?”
“I just said so, didn’t I?” Annie snapped.
Harriet looked at her sidelong. Now there were two topics she was dying to broach. Which was less likely to set Annie off, she wondered, her mother’s career or the older man? Annie stepped up on one of the wrought-iron rails that fenced off the trees on the sidewalk and balanced along its length. “Follow my steps, H’spy. First to fall off is a double- l loser,” she said, in her best imitation of Marion Hawthorne.
A thick, swirling snowfall began at the end of the school day. Mr. Grenville was reading a scene from the end of act three of Romeo and Juliet, and worked himself into such a frenzy as Juliet’s furious father that the teacher next door, Miss Munson, knocked on the wall and yelled, “Quiet!” The whole class dissolved into giggles.
Mr. Grenville looked affronted. He stretched out his arm and read, “Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!” in more modulated tones. The bell rang and the students tumbled noisily out of their chairs. Mr. Grenville sighed the deep sigh of the misunderstood.
The sidewalk was white with an inch of new snowfall. Annie and Harriet tried out different gaits, leaving strange-looking footprints by dragging one foot in a zigzagging line or walking on tiptoe. At one point they walked back to back with their arms linked, leaving twin rows of chevrons, like this:
> <
> <
> <
“Let’s go to the tree stand and see what Balsam and Douglas Fir do when it snows,” Annie said.
“They get snowy,” said Harriet.
43
Annie poked her. “You know what I mean. Do they put up tarps? Take in the trees? We haven’t been there all weekend.”
“We couldn’t,” said Harriet, sensing an opening. “You had to go to that Hanukkah thing with your aunt and uncle.” Her tone was distinctly pointed.
“And you went to Janie’s,” said Annie.
Is she calling my bluff? wondered Harriet. She tried a different approach. “Are you buying a Hanukkah gift for your older man?” Annie looked appalled. “I would never do anything so cheap and obvious. That would be tacky.” She swept off down the street. Harriet followed. She didn’t like the idea of spying on Balsam and Douglas so soon after Balsam had caught them, but she wasn’t about to let Annie get away without answering some questions. As they crossed the street toward the Koreans’, she noticed a column of smoke rising out of a trash can. Balsam threw in some cut branches, and Douglas upended a large metal trash can. Flames leaped through the can’s perforations.
Annie grabbed Harriet’s arm. “Look!” she whispered. “They’re burning the evidence!”
“What evidence?”
“Aha,” Annie said. “That’s the mystery.”
“I think they’re burning the wood chips and paper bags.”
“Shows what you know. The Dumbwit’s a document forger. You think he sits on that stool reading his book all day long, but he’s grinding out phony savings bonds right in the back of that truck. Myong-Hee’s the connection. They’ve opened an offshore account in the Bahamas.”
Harriet rolled her eyes. “Could we please stick to the facts?”
“Facts”—Annie spit out the word—“are a bore.”
Not in my world, thought Harriet. I’m going to find out the facts about you.
“Did you notice the Dumbwit’s jeans?” Annie said as they walked to the Feigenbaums’. “The knees are so ripped you can see the ripped long Johns. I tell you, H’spy, these are desperate men. They’re losing the farm and the only way out is a life of crime. Balsam is going to run off to Las Vegas to marry Myong-Hee and Douglas will be so upset that he’ll go on a killing spree. We’ll read about it in the New York Post.
‘Christmas Tree Massacre.’”
“Have you seen a lot of massacres?” Harriet asked shrewdly.
“Dozens,” said Annie.
She’s not going to give me a straight answer, ever, thought Harriet. Trying to conjure up Mr. Grenville’s dramatic skills, she let out a big phony shiver. “My feet are like ice. Let’s go inside and make cocoa.”
44
“Food’s better at your place.”
She’s trying to steer me away, thought Harriet, more determined than ever to spy on the Feigenbaums. She pulled a face. “I was stuck in my stupid apartment all yesterday.
I need a change of scenery.”
“If you must,” said Annie, and led her inside. The Feigenbaums’ receptionist looked up from her desk and smiled at them. Harriet’s eyes swept the waiting room as they walked past to the private part of the house. The tall man rubbing his knees was a Morris, for sure; the too-thin woman with bulging eyes could go either way. Probably a Barbara, Harriet thought, with a hormone disorder, or trying some test-tubey way to get pregnant.
Or, she thought, both well-disguised Mafiosi. After the men in the seafood restaurant, anything was possible. She followed Annie down the back stairs.
Annie made them both cocoa, which, Harriet noticed, had sugar and marshmallows this time around. There were even some packages of cookies. Annie’s exerting her influence over the Feigenbaums, Harriet thought. Might be significant.
Both of the patients were gone by the time th
e girls went upstairs to Annie’s room. It was a guest bedroom, layered with old Oriental rugs and painted a dim shade of russet, with still lifes and zoological etchings in frames on the walls. No visible effort had been made to redecorate it for a twelve-year-old girl, but Harriet’s sharp eyes immediately landed on two items she hadn’t seen before. The first was a well-worn sock monkey tucked next to the pillow. The second, which made her pulse race, was the lavender box the curly-haired man had thrust into Annie’s hands as she’d gotten into the cab on Saturday. It’s a love gift, thought Harriet. I have to find out what’s inside.
It seemed like a very long time until Annie got up to go the bathroom. As soon as she heard the door click, Harriet sprang to her feet and took off the top of the box, covering her fingers with her sleeve so as not to leave fingerprints. Inside was a handwritten note and a long, narrow ticket envelope. She scanned the note feverishly. It read Here’s Mr. Monkey. He missed you. So do I. xx, P.
Harriet the Spy, Double Agent Page 6