The Black Stiletto: Stars & Stripes

by Raymond Benson

  Dear diary, I felt nauseous and wanted to throw up. My hands and ankles were still taped together. When I turned my body to the side, the room spun and my stomach lurched. The chloroform or whatever it was Ivan used to put me to sleep did not agree with me at all.

  A clock on the nightstand read 7:13. The dinner was about to begin in the Grand Ballroom.

  My hearing eventually improved and muted sounds became a man’s and woman’s heated conversation in the other room. I was confused why I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and then I realized they were speaking Spanish. But I recognized the voices. Mitch and Alice. And then I heard a door open and shut. A third voice spoke English in a heavy accent. It was Ivan, the Russian.

  “Michael is in place. He takes the shot at exactly nine o’clock.”

  Alice continued to speak in Spanish.

  “Speak English, damn you!” Apparently, it was the only language that all three of them had in common.

  “I was telling her we have to get to our table,” Mitch said. “Kennedy and Nixon have already been escorted into the ballroom, right?”

  “Right. What were you arguing about?”

  “Judy.”

  “What about her?”

  “What we’re going to do with her.”

  Alice spoke up. “We can’t just kill her.”

  “Why not?” Mitch asked. “She knows too much. She knows who we are. When all this is done, we have to get rid of her.”

  “That’s absolutely correct,” Ivan said. “Alice, you know it’s what we have to do. We’ll keep her asleep. She won’t know a thing.”

  “All right, I understand. It’s just a pity, that’s all.”

  “The bigger concern is Michael,” Mitch said.

  Ivan snarled, “He is a womanizer and a fool. His recklessness is what brought the girl into this. We have our orders.”

  “What are you saying?” Alice asked.

  Mitch answered. “Michael’s a prima donna. He thinks too highly of himself and believes he has impunity. He wasn’t supposed to fraternize with the population, but he couldn’t help it. You’ve seen how difficult he is to control. He followed us to that party where he met Judy. His orders were to stay incognito, but he started a relationship with her.”

  Ivan continued, “That was careless and unprofessional. He might have blown the operation.”

  “But we ordered him to stop seeing her, and he did,” Alice said.

  “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done,” Ivan retorted.

  So that was it, dear diary. It was Mitch who had been driving the Packard that day when I saw Michael on the street. Michael gave me the brush-off right after that. And when I saw the car again on Bayard Street, it was Mitch and Alice who picked up Michael and Ivan. They were all in it together.

  “Come on, you two, get ready,” Ivan ordered. “I’m going to check on Michael.”

  Mitch said something in Spanish to Alice, and then I heard the door open and shut. After a moment, Alice walked into the bedroom.

  “You’re awake,” she said.

  I had to be Innocent Judy, so I asked, “Alice, what’s going on? Why did they do this to me?”

  “Judy, you stuck your nose where it didn’t belong,” she answered sternly. This wasn’t the Alice Graves I knew from HQ. Now she was quite cold and spoke as if she hated me. I could also sense she was scared. “Pardon me while I get ready for the dinner.”

  She started to change her clothing to a fancy black formal gown.

  “I feel sick.”

  “That’s the effects of the chloroform. It’ll pass.”

  “And then you’ll kill me?” She didn’t answer. Instead, she sat on the bed beside me. “Are you going to tell me anything? At least tell me why you’re doing this. Who are you?”

  “My real name is Alice Garcia. Mitch’s real name is Perez. We’re Cuban Americans working for the Soviet government. We joined the Kennedy campaign to keep track of the senator’s movements. The Soviets needed someone on the inside, and that was us.”

  “And Michael? And the other man?”

  She stood, stripped to her underwear, went in the bathroom, and spoke to me from there as she worked on her makeup. “Ivan is a Soviet facilitator. He’s the boss of the operation, you could say. Michael is a KGB assassin. He is one of the best snipers in the Soviet Union.”

  Suddenly, the full impact of what she was saying hit me. They were going to kill Kennedy. Tears welled in my eyes.

  “You can’t kill the senator,” I whispered.

  Alice came out of the bathroom and finished putting on the dress. “We can and we will.”

  “Why? That’s what Khrushchev wants?”

  She laughed a little. “I don’t know if Khrushchev even knows of the plan. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t.”

  I winced when I heard her words. “But it makes no sense!”

  “We don’t question orders or fail them, otherwise we die. And who wants to? We get a sizable fee and transportation out of the country.”

  I had to get out. I had to stop it. I struggled against the tape but I couldn’t break it.

  She sat on the bed again. “Stop it, Judy. It’s useless.”

  “You won’t get away with it!”

  “Yes we will. Michael’s instructions are to kill Kennedy first, and then, if he can, shoot Nixon as well. They’ll die at their tables during dinner. And even if they catch any of us, we are equipped with cyanide tablets, and we will use them. We’ll be long gone when the hotel staff finds your body here in the room in the morning, along with—I’m sorry, Judy, this isn’t my idea. It’s already gone horribly wrong.”

  They were going to kill Michael and leave him with me. There was no telling what kind of scenario the cops would think had occurred. As Alice finished getting dressed, I thought about what their motive could possibly be. Kennedy is very anti-Cuba. If he’s elected president, the Soviet Union’s plans for Cuba would be jeopardized. Were they trying to throw chaos into the presidential race? I didn’t know for sure and I might never know. It was all so crazy.

  There was a knock on the bedroom door. “Come in,” Alice said. Mitch entered.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  Alice left me on the bed, and went in the bathroom. She returned with the chloroform bottle and the rag. I could smell the dreaded chemical from several feet away, and it made my stomach turn.

  “I’m going to be sick!” I managed to say. Then I did throw up, right there on the bed.

  Both Alice and Mitch cursed, I think, in Spanish. She put down the bottle and rag, and grabbed a trash can. Alice shoved it at my face, just in time to catch another heave. Yuck. I hate throwing up. She held the can there until the spasms subsided, and then she took it and emptied the contents into the toilet.

  I had to get up. I had to fight her. I had to escape.

  “Leave her!” Mitch commanded.

  I was just too out of it to do anything. My head felt like lead, all I wanted was to drop it on the pillow. I didn’t care if there was a foul mess on the bed beside me.

  I seem to remember a feeble struggle as Alice and Mitch appeared above me with the chloroform rag. My last thought, I recall, was that they were going to kill me in my sleep. Then I was gone again.

  I took a break from writing to take a shower. That felt good.

  So—I did wake up, still alone in the hotel room. I didn’t know if it was minutes or hours later. Alice wasn’t in the bedroom.

  The vomit had dried a little, so that was an indication that some time had past. It still stank. My stomach was doing somersaults, so I managed to roll away from it and face the other side.

  The clock read 8:49.

  Oh my God, dear diary, I realized I had very little time to save the senator and vice-president, and this brought on a rush of adrenaline. It must have helped me somehow, for I immediately felt better.

  I tried breathing deeply, the way Soichiro had taught me. Closed my eyes. Attempted to clear my head. Breathed.r />
  At 8:51, I rose, swung my bound feet to the floor and searched the room.

  I stood and hopped across the floor. It felt good to move. I managed to get to my knees and then sit beside my backpack. I picked it up with my two bound hands and placed it in my lap. It was awkward, but I unzipped it and dug out my outfit, piece by piece. At first I thought I could use my stiletto to cut the tape, but I found it difficult to grasp the hilt with my hands twisted and bound. Ivan had taped me wrist-to-wrist with the top hand face up, the bottom one face down. Believe me, it’s nearly impossible to grasp something with your hands in that position. I had to resort to the smaller knife I kept in my boot. The folded, knee-high boots were at the bottom of the backpack, so I wrestled them out and retrieved my six-inch wrist dagger. It was just the right size to “wedge” the hilt in between the backs of my hands. The knife was more or less gripped as firmly as I could get it.

  I pulled up my knees and sawed away on the tape around my ankles. As soon as my legs were free, I got up and went to the door with my wrists still taped together. With one hand I slowly turned the knob and cracked the door a sliver. I was alone. Good.

  Moving to the bed, I sat Indian-style, now that I could, and managed to draw the stiletto and place it between the soles of my feet. The stockings were slicker than I’d wished, but I didn’t have time to try and take them off. Holding the knife firmly, I sliced and stabbed the tape around my wrists until I could pull my hands apart.

  I quickly dressed as the Black Stiletto. By the time I left the suite it must have been a minute or two before nine.

  36

  Martin

  THE PRESENT

  Coming back to Chicagoland didn’t hold much of a promise of things getting better. As soon as I got home midday, I hopped in my car and drove to the hospital to see Mom. On the way, I phoned Maggie to tell her I was back. She didn’t answer, so I left a message. When I got to Northwest Community, Mom was asleep, but I had a chance to speak with Dr. Benji.

  The news wasn’t too good. He said Mom had improved because she speaks now, but he fears she’s reached a plateau and may or may not regain all of the abilities she had before the stroke. In other words, it’s possible that the Alzeheimer’s symptoms will now get worse. Right now she is quite disoriented, so Dr. Benji wants to keep her in ICU for a while longer. Her heart is fine, but it’s best that Mom not get too excited. Oddly, the doctor said, she doesn’t seem too distressed about being in the hospital, as many Alzeheimer’s patients— and my mom—have experienced. They often don’t understand what’s going on, so they become anxious or angry and sometimes even violent.

  Mom was awake after I talked to the doctor. A nurse named Victoria was in the room with her and seemed to be handling her well. “Oh, look who’s here, Judy,” she said as I approached the bed. Mom looked bewildered, not focusing on anything in particular. I thought maybe it was because she’d just woken up, but her lack of being in the moment lingered through the entire visit. Usually, even if she doesn’t remember who I am, she smiles when she sees me because she knows I’m someone she loves. This time she didn’t even do that. The only way I can describe it is the “blankness,” the thing that Alzheimer’s inflicts on a victim, was more prominent. Nevertheless, I sat and talked to her. I told her about my trip to New York and that Carol and I had gone to see Gina, but I didn’t say why. She’d respond now and then with a “Really?” or a “That’s nice,” and was at the very least listening to me. Whether or not she comprehended it, I couldn’t say, but I stayed there all afternoon anyway.

  On the way to Maggie’s place, I felt pretty bummed. The visit with Mom was disheartening and it made me sad. I can’t help but think that she might not be around much longer, and I’m not sure how I’m going to react to that.

  We had Chinese take-out for dinner. I brought a bottle of wine. Maggie seemed a little nervous when I got there, so I asked her about it and she said she was just tired and that it had been a stressful few days without me around. She looked pretty and it was nice to feel her arms around me and get a kiss. I told her about my mother, and she said the right things and tried to make me feel better about the situation.

  She had put Christmas decorations up and there was a tree with lights and baubles and an angel on top. “Hey, when did you have time to do all this?” I asked.

  “While you were in New York, of course.”

  “But I would’ve helped you. You should’ve waited.”

  “It gave me something to do over the weekend. And I wanted it to be a surprise when you got home.”

  My mood improved as we watched TV and ate in her living room. I told Maggie about the trip to New York and my concerns about Gina. I also mentioned that I made peace with Carol. Her wedding is next week.

  “I hope you’ll go with me,” I said.

  “I’d be delighted,” she answered. “I was afraid you’d never ask.”

  “I wasn’t so sure I was going, but I guess I am. Gina will be home for it, too. It’ll be a lot less disturbing with you there, Maggie.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “Why should it be disturbing, as long as you’re in love with me and not still in love with her?”

  “What? No, no way,” I said. “Still in love with Carol? Are you kidding? No, no, no, no, no. You’re the love of my life right now.” I meant it, too.

  World Entertainment Television came on the TV, and my old friend Sandy Lee was the anchor/host, as usual. There were the same old inane stories about the Hollywood in-crowd, who was dating who, why so-and-so had to go to jail, and other gossip about stuff I didn’t care anything about.

  Then, out of the blue, Sandy Lee said, “Stay tuned for a story about the Black Stiletto and her time in Los Angeles, right after this message.” That got my attention. In fact, it startled me so much I spilled wine all over my shirt. I had to run into the kitchen and splash cold water on it. It was stained but I didn’t care. I got back to my seat in time for the story. Luckily, Maggie was more concerned about my shirt and made me take it off. She took it to the laundry room while I watched the program.

  Sandy Lee interviewed a retired policeman from L.A. who said he encountered the Stiletto during a bank robbery. His name was Scott Garriott, and he was a beat cop in the late fifties, sixties, and seventies. He retired in the eighties and was now pushing ninety. The man seemed to have his wits about him, though, for he described my mother quite accurately.

  “She was tall and athletic and had pretty brown eyes,” he said. “It was 1961, and I was in the patrol car with my partner Danny Delgado. It was in September; I remember it plain as day. We were heading back to the precinct ‘cause our shift was nearly over. Suddenly we got a radio call about a robbery in progress at the Security Pacific Bank off of Hollywood Boulevard. Danny and I were the first officers on the scene, and we surprised the bank robbers. One of the tellers must have triggered the silent alarm. Danny and I didn’t wait for backup. There were four altogether, armed and disguised; two had the employees and a few customers held hostage while the other two went to work in the back. They wore Halloween masks of movie monsters, you know, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man.

  “We burst inside and Danny got shot. I took cover behind a counter and fired my weapon at one of the robbers. But one hoodlum grabbed a civilian and held a gun to her head, so there was nothing I could do. Danny was wounded and needed medical attention, so I tossed my gun to the crooks and raised my hands like they ordered me to do.

  “Suddenly, who shows up? The Black Stiletto. I have no idea where she came from, but there she was in the bank, dodging bullets and fighting the perps. I couldn’t believe it. I’d heard she was in Los Angeles, but I didn’t believe it until I saw her with my own eyes. But the robbers got away in a van that screeched up to the front door to pick them up. The Black Stiletto vanished, too. The robbers got something out of a safety deposit box, but didn’t take any money. Maybe they didn’t rob the bank of its cash because the Stiletto showed up. The thing is, I’m not so sure
the Stiletto wasn’t involved in the robbery. Was she in cahoots with the gang? It’s possible. Her intrusion might have been simply a diversion, allowing the crooks to get away.”

  Well, I didn’t believe that theory. It was crazy. Mom would never help bank robbers. She was probably trying to stop the heist and her actions were misinterpreted.

  The bank robbers were never caught.

  You know, I’ve always wondered how and why my mother moved from New York to L.A. Will that be revealed in the next diary? I have to get on the ball and finish reading the third one and go on to the next. Maybe there will be a clue as to who Richard Talbot really was.

  Watching that TV story and thinking about my father’s identity triggered something. All of a sudden I didn’t feel so good. I felt another panic attack coming on, and I didn’t want to be in front of Maggie when it happened. I went and found her in the laundry room. I took my shirt from her, wet, and put it on.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Martin! Your shirt’s wet!”

  “I don’t care, I have to go. I’ll take it off when I get home.”

  “Martin, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing, I just need to go. I’m sorry, Maggie. Please—”

  “But why?” Maggie asked. “You’ve been drinking, you can’t drive.”

  “Sure I can.”

  “Martin, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Then you can’t go.”

  “I’m going.” I abruptly went to the front door, and put my jacket on over the wet shirt.

  “Martin, what are you hiding from me?” Maggie demanded.

  “Nothing!” I shouted. Maggie recoiled at my anger, and I immediately said, “I’m sorry. Maggie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

  “Martin, it’s all right. I’m on your side, for God’s sake.”

  I didn’t know what to do, so I copped out. “I have to leave. Sorry, Maggie. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  So I left.

  Crap, I’m a fucking cripple. And it’s all my mom’s fault.