“No more games, doll,” I whispered with all the menace I could muster. “Open up.”
But Ingrid didn’t answer. I knocked again. Nothing. I tried the door and found it was unlocked. So, I struck my best tough-guy pose and let myself in.
The bad-guy shtick drained out of me as soon as I saw her lying face-up on her bed. This time she wasn’t striking a seductive pose, wasn’t half-naked, enticing me to go another round of rub-a-dub-dub all hands in the tub. I drew closer. Someone had given her the once-over twice. The poor kid was all mashed up. Ingrid, the breathtaking beauty, was now barely breathing.
“Hey.” I knelt down beside her.
Ingrid turned her beaten and bloodied head to look at me. She peered out through swollen, half open eyes. Her pupils were completely black, solid-red where the whites should’ve been. I wasn’t any doctor, but I had been around the block enough to know that wasn’t a good sign.
“Seth,” she said with quiet effort. “Shouldn’t be here. He’ll … come back.”
“Who?” I put a hand on Ingrid’s right arm. The only place on her body that wasn’t black and blue and red. The urge to run and get help filled me. Fat chance of anyone believing me, but I felt I had to try. Ingrid may have been barely conscious, but she could read my mind.
“No time.” She skipped ahead, always a few steps in front of me ever since the beginning. “Must get to Garbo.”
“Ingrid,” I whispered, “what do the Nazis want with Garbo?”
I couldn’t stand to see her this way. Couldn’t stand to think of anyone having done this to her. Felt guilty that I had ever contemplated being a tough guy with her.
“Not N—” Ingrid said and closed her eyes.
“Nazis?” I said.
I leaned my face in, close to hers. Kissed her temple. I needed her to tell me what she knew, but I couldn’t get past the horror of seeing her this way. This was Ingrid, for Christ’s sake. The sweet innocent Swedish barmaid. The devious resourceful British agent. The first woman I knew to give as good as she got and then some. How could this have happened to her?
“Who then?” I said as quietly as I could. “What the hell is going on?”
Ingrid opened her eyes again. Then she opened her mouth, but nothing came out. I put my ear above her red, still beautiful lips.
“Please, sweetheart.” I said, tears welling up in my eyes. “Please try.”
Ingrid forced breath through those lips. I caught the slightest sounds of speech. Rising like a stir of echoes from deep within a vertical cave.
“Love,” she whispered. Then she gasped, her chest rising in convulsion. She grasped with her left hand for mine. I held it fast as her chest fell, her last breath escaped through her swollen, red lips. “Love is listening.”
Then Ingrid was gone.
Deep sobs welled up in me as I closed Ingrid’s eyelids with my fingers. I let myself cry over her body. Kissed her lips closed with my own. Covered her face up with the bed sheet. Said a prayer, then lifted up off my knees.
Love is listening. Her last words played over and over in my head, but what did they mean? I had to get a grip for the second time in one day. I sat on Ingrid’s bed beside her now-still body and composed myself. What chance did I have, really? Against a stone-cold killer who would beat a woman to her death for knowing too much. Knowing and not telling. Only that love is listening.
Must have been Nazis. Who else could have done such an unspeakable evil act? Whose name was behind Ingrid’s tongue-twisting cryptic message, “Love is listening,” when she exhaled her last breath? Who was I looking for? Heinrich? I couldn’t even imagine Big Nazi Monkey had it in him to do this. Not to my Ingrid. And what the hell did that have to do with love or listening?
Then again, what the hell did I know what people were and weren’t capable of? I barely had a handle on my own abilities. If Ingrid was in a life-and-death battle, then she knew the dangers. Knew she might very well end up paying with her life. She fought until the bitter end, for whatever it was she believed in. I couldn’t imagine the level of personal strength it took to stay true to your beliefs in the face of certain death. Such singular devotion beyond saving one’s own neck was foreign to me.
Then I remembered what Father O’Keefe had said to me back at Amherst, my alma mater: “If you fail to plan, Moseley, you plan to fail.” Except his Irish accent had been so thick, I thought he’d said, “plan to flail.” The good priest had been my guidance counselor and the first to suggest journalism as a career. He’d wanted me to plan, not fail or flail. I wondered what would he make of Ingrid’s last words?
Flail. That’s what I planned to do now, all right. Flail and fail under a hail of bullets. How alliterative I could be when scared out of my wits. That had to count for something, right, Father O’Keefe? Seth Moseley, smart aleck to the very end.
Then I remembered the dead girl under the bed sheet. No doubt in my mind Ingrid had taken the beating meant for me. She’d saved me with her brains and her body. I loved her for that. Felt I owed her now. I must finish what she started. Even if the only thing that came of it was that she hadn’t died in vain. And I met my own death with all the nobility I could possibly muster.
Survive, Moseley. That was the key. Stay alive long enough to find out who killed Ingrid and why. Long enough to find Garbo and what love is listening meant. Finally fit all the pieces together and get the bigger picture. The only one that really mattered now.
Picture. I looked over and up at the now empty shelf where my camera case had been. Ingrid’s murderer had taken the time to confiscate my personal property. Why? What was a photograph worth compared to a human life? Yeah, I’d come aboard to photograph Garbo only to find out I wasn’t the only one looking to frame the movie star.
A shiver ran through me. I looked back down at Ingrid’s body, a tiny speck of blood now showing through her bed sheet shroud. A beautiful woman cut down in her prime. I feared whoever was now lurking behind my stolen camera wanted to shoot the same ending for Garbo. The same way most of her motion pictures ended. In a dramatic death scene.
20. LOVE IS LISTENING SETH
From Ingrid’s cabin I went directly to A-Deck men’s room, Ingrid’s blood literally on my hands, I had to wash up and get my bearings. But when I got there, Nick and Lars were nowhere to be found. They had disappeared into thin air, and I was left alone to stare into the same mirror I’d stared into when I first realized the Athenia was my new temporary home. Enough. Time was running out.
I ran out to the Promenade Deck. Looked for any sign of Nick and Lars. Wishful thinking. A handful of A-Class passengers stood in their whites like ghosts, sipping cocktails while their privileged offspring played shuffleboard. I could have remained on the darkening Promenade Deck of the S.S. Athenia and sipped sidecars with the swells. God knows the Old Seth would have. But I had to see my beloved again. I had to get back to Garbo.
So I beat it through the Athenia’s mahogany-lined corridors to Garbo’s suite. I had no real expectation that the screen goddess would be there. I put an ear to her door and listened. Nothing. I knocked. Still nothing. Had the Nazis already gotten to her? Were they inside keeping her mum? Time was a wasting. I’d already bested one of the gorillas, and I told myself I could do it again. So I crossed the empty hallway, then made a run for the door. I was going in no matter what.
No sooner had I busted through the door of the curtain-drawn cabin, than a shot rang out. THWAK! The hardwood molding of the doorframe beside my face exploded. Fine, sharp wood fragments smacked into the left side of my face and neck. Sure as shit, whoever was on the other end of that bullet was readjusting his aim. I was a goner.
“Don’t,” a feminine silhouette from within the darkened room warned, “move.”
I did as I was told. The side of my face burned like I’d been set afire, but I didn’t so much as twitch.
“Drop your weapon,” Garbo said in her distinctive low contralto voice.
Weapon? I held out my open palms
, red with Ingrid’s blood. Garbo, in all her enigmatic glory, rose from the bed and closed the short distance between us in a few silent steps. The .9mm semi-automatic gun in her right hand pointed at my racing heart. Never taking her huge eyes or the .9mm off me.
“Seth,” she said.
This was the first time we’d been vertical together, and Garbo was taller than me by a couple inches. I stared her straight in the nostrils, not daring to make eye contact. Her schnozzle was perfectly proportioned, as was all five-feet, nine-odd inches of her.
“I nearly killed you.”
“I know,” I mouthed. The left side of my face felt like it was melting. A warm trickle of wetness ran down the left side of my neck. My blood was on the run. Garbo embraced me. Pressed her beautiful breasts into my chest and both the pain in my neck and my questions temporarily evaporated. Lust was nature’s anesthetic.
“Nazis” I whispered. I still didn’t dare look her straight in her baby blues.
“I know,” she said and rested her head on my shoulder. Then she pushed back and looked at me with a perplexed expression shimmered across her magnificent face. “Why are you here? This wasn’t part of the plan.”
Plan? I let myself look up into Garbo’s eyes. Her glowing-white-hot-from-within porch lights were so intense, I squinted under their glare. I had dreamed of being this close to her again. But suddenly her full attention became more than I could bear. I wanted to run, shrink away from her spotlights, they were so intense.
“What plan?” I said and felt light-headed. Now there were two beautiful Garbos before me.
“Seth?” she said.
My knees weakened, then buckled underneath me. I fell forward and Garbo dropped her gun and caught me in her arms. She held me while I looked up at her, my double vision reunited into one. The woman the entire world had fallen for was holding me up.
“Seth,” she said, her famously long lashes fanning my face. “Are you all right, my love?”
Then the sound and vibration of the Athenia’s engines cut out. Full Stop. Replaced by ghostly metallic sounds of lashing ropes, scraping hooks and urgent voices speaking German. Then I blacked out.
When I came to, I was on Garbo’s bed squinting against the sun. She had opened the curtains to let in enough light to work by. I gazed at her face while she concentrated on the task at hand. She applied a wet washcloth to my wounded face, then rinsed it with fresh water in a basin on the night table. Her expression had softened from before. The storm in her eyes temporarily abated, the electric charge in the atmosphere dissipated.
“Looks like you’ve lost a lot of blood,” she said matter of factly. Then she took my left hand and washed the dried blood off of my digits. Her simple act of kindness toward me was enough for me to pledge my allegiance to her anew.
“Not mine,” I heard myself say as if from deep within a cave. I reached to retrieve recent events, however fuzzy in my aching memory. “Ingrid’s.”
Garbo stopped. Concern darkened her eyes. She looked down at the palm of my hand.
“Is she hurt?” she said, a slight tremor in her voice now.
Not, “What are you talking about?” Not, “Who is Ingrid?” But, “Is she hurt?” Garbo and Ingrid had known each other, all right. And by the expression on Garbo’s face it had been more than a passing acquaintance. I’d already figured as much.
“Ingrid is dead.”
Then Garbo’s huge glacier-blue pools covered in mist. She wiped the same spot on my hand over and over with that bloody washcloth. Like a leopard methodically scraping the same patch of earth, searching for a telltale scent. A whiff of honeysuckle?
Everything stopped in that moment. Garbo, who had dominion over the hearts and minds of legions of men and women worldwide, stopped time to grieve. Nothing dared interrupt her as she lowered her gaze to the blood that now stained her own hands. Ingrid’s blood.
“Why?” was all she said.
The question, I had to believe, was not directed at me. But I tried to answer anyhow. I found my voice and told her everything I knew. How I had met Ingrid. Met Nick. Met Heinrich, the Nazi gorilla, after meeting her. Then escaped King Kong and led him directly back to Ingrid. How she had spared me long enough for the Athenia’s authorities to come.
Garbo took it all in. Her gaze never wavered from her red-painted hands. I didn’t attempt to read her thoughts. A child shooting rubber bands at the moon stood a better chance of reaching them. Instead, I stared up at Garbo while she stared down. Her strawberry-blonde tresses hung down between us, suspended just above my chest.
“This world is darker than I ever imagined,” she uttered in her low contralto voice.
I tried to breathe. Tried not to black out again from the injury to my face. I needed to focus my thoughts on where I was and what to do next. That’s when a verse popped out of nowhere and filled my aching head. A long-ago lullaby, recited by my mother as she’d rocked me to sleep one summer night.
“Lavender blue and rosemary green,” I sang. Garbo sank her head lower. “When I am king you shall be queen.” I reached with my clean hand to the base of her neck and gently pulled her down to me, brought her forehead to rest on my chest. “Call up my maids at four o’clock. Some to the wheel and some to the rock.”
Garbo’s shoulders quaked and shook. Her lips pressed into my shirt, stifling a scream, even as her slowly setting eyes spilled, soaked my suit vest with tears.
“Some to make hay and some to shear corn,” I singsonged softly, rocking her back and forth. “And you and I will keep the bed warm.”
I kissed the crown of her head, and we stayed like that for a moment. Then another. Then she startled. Garbo looked up as if she had been summoned by a far-off silent bell, rung out especially for her.
Then, close as we were to each other, Garbo stared into me with those penetrating blue eyes. The ones I’d fallen for so long before back in Los Angeles on a studio lot. A flicker of bright blue flame grew large in each one. Her pilot lights had come back on. Her engines were ready to ignite with me in their line of fire. Blast off.
Garbo got up off the bed and methodically cleaned herself up. She cleaned her hands, then took the basin filled with blood and water to the bathroom. I heard her pouring it down the tub drain.
I had to be wise and choose my words carefully. I had to behold her when I spoke. Wanted to show her I could be trusted yet not provoke her. But time was running out. I had told her what I knew. Now I needed some information. I waited until Garbo came back out of the bathroom.
“Whoever killed Ingrid”—I hit her with everything I had—“didn’t want to be exposed.”
Garbo looked at me, distracted again.
“I have no time for this,” she said.
A smart tactical move on her part. Garbo wasn’t taking any chances. She had obviously been taught not to trust anyone. To suspect everyone. Had that been Ingrid’s teachings or her own baser instinct, honed over a lifetime of being watched, wanted? Hunted?
“Don’t you?” I held my breath.
It might have been a trick of light from the porthole or maybe my own imagination. But I thought I saw despair on her patrician face. Was Garbo despondent over being all alone? Burdened in the knowledge there was no one who knew the truth now? Her truth.
Then, quick as the emotion had surfaced, it was gone from her face. Retreated back into her where no one could see. Fathoms beneath her cool exterior.
She came over, sat down on the bed and faced me. She crossed her hands, one atop the other. Her perfect posture didn’t give anything away. She was good, all right. She deserved her reputation as the best actress in the world.
“You must compose yourself and leave,” she said. “They will be here soon.”
I stared at her beautiful face. Tried to imagine what she was feeling. But she had already closed me out. Closed everyone out. Garbo had started the clock again, and there was no time to waste. Still, I wasn’t finished.
“The letter.” I reached out a hand
to close the space between us. To connect. I had intended to rest my hand on top of hers, but Garbo pulled back before I could make physical contact.
“It was signed A.H.,” I continued. “Adolf Hitler wrote you.”
Garbo turned and got up from the bed. I thought I glimpsed another expression. Either she couldn’t turn away fast enough or thought she was safely hidden behind her strawberry blonde mane. This time, I thought I saw an expression of relief.
“That.” Her lips formed a smirk. Then she turned back to the porthole. “Is none of your affair.”
I had to pull myself together. My face still throbbed, but Garbo nursing me had taken the sting out of being shot at, even by her. She had come to my aid, even as the hour of her own departure drew near. Even as a harsh new reality beckoned to her. I rose up from the bed.
“That’s why you have a gun,” I said.
To be fair, everyone on board seemed to have a gun. Except me. But somehow, Garbo having a gun seemed out of place. Incongruent with my image of her. Why would someone as powerful as she even need one.
Then it all clicked, snapped sharply into focus.
“You’re going to kill him,” I said.
Garbo looked at me, mirrored my own surprise reaction. The letter. The gun. The look in her eyes. All of it now added up, made sense. Sense in a mad-scientist sort of way. She raised a perfectly manicured finger and pointed passed me.
“You must go, Seth” she said. “Before it is too late.”
I looked back over my shoulder and spied the fat-cherub lamp I so hated. Cupid the little fuck had gotten me good. I’d fallen head over heels for the most beautiful woman God had ever created, and now I had to be the messenger of bad tidings. Give her the worst news possible.
“Haven’t you heard?” I said. “The war has already started. You’re too late.”
But Garbo wasn’t listening to me anymore. She moved toward the porthole, the dimming light fired her pupils now a purple-blue. I could see she was receding far inside herself. She was sinking somewhere unreachable. I knew there was no reason to try and convince her to alter her present course. But I’d have her answer one last question, Goddamnit. One last question before she was lost to me forever.
Looking for Garbo Page 17