by Dan Simmons
Jesus H. Christ, I thought, looking out at the small home and shops flashing by. Every spy agency in this hemisphere seems interested in Hemingway’s clown circus. WHY? I said, “What do you want, Mr. Phillips?”
The man sighed and arranged his small, pink hands on his knees. His trousers carried a perfect crease. “The unfortunate event on Simón Bolívar Street in Veracruz,” he said very softly. “You know that I was involved in the initial planning stages of that operation?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, Mr. Lucas, you must also know that the ONI was removed from active involvement about the time of your… ah… incident on Simón Bolívar Street. The deaths of Schiller and Lopez surprised me. Before leaving the country, I took time to visit the house on Simón Bolívar and to review the SIS report on the incident.”
I felt my heart rate accelerate. The SIS and the Bureau had checked the bodies, read my report, but had never ordered a shooting board review.
Wallace Beta Phillips was looking intently at my face. “I believe that in your report you stated that the gunmen were waiting for you in the house, Mr. Lucas. That you arrived early, sensed something wrong, and went in quickly. They shot and missed. Forty-two bullets, I believe. You fired four times.”
“Lopez had a Luger,” I said. “Schiller was firing a Schmeisser on full automatic.”
Phillips smiled. “They were firing at the front door and the front of the house, Mr. Lucas. They were shot in the backs of their heads and upper torsos.”
I waited.
“You did get there early, Mr. Lucas. You went in the back door, past the dog. The dog knew you, but you still had to cut its throat so it would not give you away as you came in through the kitchen and crept down the hallway in the dark. Once in the room, you created a diversion at the front door… I do not know precisely how, although one of the neighbors mentioned seeing a child throw a rock at the door and then run quickly away. Messieurs Schiller and Lopez began firing. You shot each of them in the back of the head. You executed them, Mr. Lucas—with premeditation and skill, I might add.”
There was nothing I could say to that. I watched the scenery go by. We were taking the long way to San Francisco de Paula. I noticed Mr. Cowley’s eyes flicking to the rearview mirror; they were wider than they had been a moment before.
“We do not know about General Walter Krivitsky a year ago February,” continued Phillips after a moment. “Perhaps you shot him. Perhaps you gave him your pistol and waited while he shot himself. Either way, you impressed Dr. Hans Wesemann and the rest of the Abwehr apparatus left in this hemisphere, and they still consider you a lethal freelance operative. Had you been in ONI, I would have used you for more double agent operations.”
“I’m not in ONI,” I said. “Nor in your soon-to-be OSS. What do you want, Mr. Phillips?” I was suddenly and totally tired of all this talk: Hemingway’s palaver rather than action, Delgado’s threats and ironies, Colonel Thomason’s hearty man-to-man absurdities about sinking submarines, and Phillips’s accusations. At this moment, somewhere out there in the Pacific, good Americans were being marched to their deaths and beheaded by strutting Japanese assholes carrying samurai swords. In Europe, innocent men and women in a dozen countries woke up every morning with swastikas flying over their occupied civic buildings, with jackbooted Wehrmacht goons driving through their empty, rainy streets. Only a few miles from here, good young men in the merchant marine were being drowned by torpedoes they never even saw.
“Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Donovan think that you understand our way of fighting this war, Mr. Lucas,” said Phillips. “They believe that you will not let inter-agency rivalry blind you to the larger issues.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I said. “What does that have to do with Hemingway’s little game down here?”
Phillips gave me another long, appraising stare, as if trying to assess whether I was lying. I didn’t give a shit what he thought. Perhaps he read that in my poker face. “We have reason to believe,” he said at last, “that Mr. J. Edgar Hoover is up to something unorthodox here in Cuba. Probably something illegal.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “The BSC and ONI taught the Bureau how to chamfer and carry out black bag jobs. And if that’s going on here, I sure don’t know about it. Hemingway’s so-called operatives don’t know any tradecraft.”
Phillips shook his hairless head. “No, no, I don’t mean the run-of-the-mill stock-in-trade of all of our agencies, Mr. Lucas. I mean something that may endanger the national security of the United States of America.”
I gave Phillips a disgusted look. This was melodramatic garbage. J. Edgar Hoover was a liar and a consummate infighter, protecting his bureaucratic turf at anyone’s expense, but if the man had any religion beyond his own career, it was the safety and security of the U.S.A.
“Give me a specific example with corroborating evidence,” I said flatly, “or stop the fucking car and let me out.” We were within a mile of Hemingway’s finca.
Phillips shook his head. “I have none yet, Mr. Lucas. I was hoping that you would provide it.”
“Stop the car,” I said.
Cowley pulled over. I opened the door and got out.
“There is Mr. Delgado, as you know him,” said Phillips through the open window.
“What about him?” A Cuban truck roared by, music and horns blaring.
“We have reason to believe that he is Special Agent D,” said the humpback.
This gave me pause.
Every agent in the Bureau and the SIS had heard of Special Agent D. Some believed in him. These are the facts as I knew them:
At 10:30 P.M. on the night of July 21, 1934, the criminal John Dillinger and two women—one of them the infamous “Woman in Red,” Ana Cumpanas, aka Anna Sage, who had betrayed the gangster—walked out of the Biograph Theater in Chicago. The squad of Bureau agents waiting in ambush for Dillinger was officially headed up by SAC Sam Cowley, but the real leader of the group was Melvin Purvis, who had already received more public attention than Mr. Hoover could tolerate in a subordinate. Purvis identified Mrs. Sage (since it was he who had made the deal with her to betray Dillinger) and tipped off the rest of the SAs waiting around the theater by the prearranged signal of lighting his cigar. Rather, Purvis tried to light his cigar; his hands were shaking so badly that he could hardly hold the match, much less light the stogie and then pull out his pistol.
Dillinger ran. Purvis reportedly shouted, in his thin, squeaky voice, “Stick ’em up, Johnny. We have you surrounded.” Instead of surrendering, Hoover’s so-called Public Enemy Number One pulled a .380 Colt automatic from his jacket pocket and was gunned down by four special agents.
Melvin Purvis was credited by the press and the public for the kill, and the fact that several other agents also fired was public knowledge. But what everyone in the Bureau had heard were the real details of the shooting: Purvis never pulled his gun, much less fired it. SAC Cowley—who was later gunned down by Baby Face Nelson—also did not fire. The four men who fired were Special Agents Herman Hollis, who missed; Clarence Hurt and Charles Winstead, who might have wounded Dillinger; and a fourth agent, referred to in reports only as “Special Agent D,” who was thought to have fired only one shot—the fatal one. In later reports, Special Agent D had disappeared completely, and although Hoover’s credit for killing Dillinger went to the late Sam Cowley and unofficial credit went to Charles Winstead, rumors continued to spread about Special Agent D.
According to Bureau lore, Special Agent D was a young psychopath—a former hit man for the Mob—whom Mr. Hoover and Greg Tolson had turned to in desperation, paying him ten times the annual salary of a special agent in charge, to fight Dillinger and the others on their own terms. Also according to this water-cooler myth, Special Agent D had been responsible in that bloody year of 1934 for the shootings of Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson, although once again credit went to the late Cowley and also to SA Herman Hollis, who also had been killed in
the gunfight with Baby Face Nelson.
The legend of Special Agent D had grown to the point that he was credited with solving the Lindbergh kidnapping case in 1934—although in his own inimitable way. Special Agent D was said to have followed the actual kidnapper—a fag who had befriended one of the Lindberghs’ maids before kidnapping and killing the child—to Europe and, in a white rage, put a .38 in the fag’s mouth and pulled the trigger. This would not have been a proper public solution to the case for J. Edgar Hoover, so the Bureau had arrested Bruno Hauptmann, a friend and very minor accomplice of the dead fag, to cover it up.
In the eight years since that bloody year, Bureau agents had quietly embroidered the legend of the psychopathic ex-Mob killer Special Agent D, giving him credit for several of the more spectacular but confused killings of various “public enemies.” Special Agent D was the stealthy but rabid dog Mr. Hoover kept in his closet for special assignments, unleashing him only when serious problems required quick, serious solutions.
This was the boogeyman with which Wallace Beta Phillips was threatening me. Special Agent D equaled my SIS contact, Delgado.
I laughed out loud and stepped back from the Buick. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Phillips,” I said.
The hairless humpback in his expensive suit did not smile. “If you need us, Mr. Lucas, call room three-fourteen at the Nacional, any time, day or night. And be careful, Mr. Lucas. Be very careful.” He nodded to Mr. Cowley, the driver, and the Buick moved off.
I walked into San Francisco de Paula and trudged up the hill to the finca. Lights were on in the main house, the Victrola was playing, and I could hear the clink of glasses and soft conversation.
“Shit,” I said softly. I had not eaten in town and there was still no food in the guest house. Ah, well… it would be only ten hours or so until breakfast.
I WAS STILL RAVENOUS when I was awakened shortly after two A.M. as someone fumbled at the guest house lock, opened it, and padded softly into the outer room. I remained lying down but shifted slightly in bed so that the pillow was between me and the bedroom door, the .38 beneath the pillow, muzzle aimed at the open door, hammer back.
The dark shape filled the doorway. I knew from the familiar tread that it was Hemingway, but I did not lower the hammer until he spoke in a loud whisper.
“Lucas, wake up!”
“What?”
“Get dressed. Hurry.”
“Why?”
“Someone’s been killed,” Hemingway whispered, the dark bulk of him leaning in from the doorway, his voice excited but under control. “We have to get there before the police do.”
10
I HALF EXPECTED THIS to be another one of Hemingway’s games, but the man was dead, all right. Quite dead. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. He was lying on an unmade bed in a tangle of red sheets and pillows dyed crimson from the bleeding that had matted in his chest hair and stained his baggy Boxer shorts an obscene pink. His eyes were open and staring, his mouth was locked wide in a silent scream, his head was slammed back into the red pillows in an arch of final agony, and the ragged lips of the sliced throat gapped open like a shark’s bloody grin. The knife—pearl handled, a five-inch blade—lay amidst the tousle of sopping bedclothes.
Hemingway took charge and reviewed the scene with the tight-lipped silence men assume in the presence of violent death. He and I were the only men present. Four or five women—whores all—milled about. The death scene was a seedy, windowless room on the second floor of a downtown whorehouse—one of the several where Hemingway’s “field agents” worked on their backs—and the whores stood there in chemises and gauzy robes, some staring in dull apathy, others with their hands fluttering to their mouths in shock. The beautiful whore, Maria, was one of the latter, her pale fingers trembling against her cheeks. Her silken underwear was soaked through with the dead man’s blood.
Until now “beautiful whore” had been an oxymoron to my way of thinking; all of the whores I had ever known were unattractive and stupid, with pasty complexions, splotchy blemishes, dull eyes, whose lipsticked mouths were about as attractive to me as this corpse’s slashed throat. This whore—Maria Marquez—was different. Her hair was rich black, her face thin and fragile but enriched with full lips and large brown eyes. Her gaze was terrified at the moment, but obviously intelligent, and she had the delicate fingers of a pianist. She looked young—certainly not yet twenty and perhaps as young as sixteen or seventeen—but she was definitely a woman.
The oldest woman present was Leopoldina la Honesta—“Honest Leopoldina”—a prostitute to whom Hemingway had introduced me a few days earlier with all the solemnity and ceremony appropriate to a meeting with royalty. In my book, an honest whore would have been more rare than a beautiful one. In truth, Leopoldina la Honesta had a regal bearing, lovely dark hair, and proud bones. She must have been beautiful in her youth. Even in the confusion of this murder scene, she comported herself with dignity and calm.
“Get these others out of here,” said Hemingway.
Leopoldina shooed away all of the girls except Maria and closed the door.
“Tell us,” said the writer.
Maria still seemed too shocked and shaken to speak, but Leopoldina la Honesta spoke slowly in elegant Spanish, her voice a rich mixture of whiskey and smoke. “This man came in about one this morning. He asked specifically for a young girl—unspoiled—and naturally I sent him to Maria….”
I looked at the younger whore. She did seem unspoiled, her skin as smooth as a baby doe’s. Her hair had been cut at shoulder length but was rich and black, framing the thin face and large eyes.
“Sometime later we heard the shouting, then the screaming,” finished Leopoldina.
“Who was shouting?” said Hemingway. “Who was screaming?”
“The man… or men… were shouting,” said the older prostitute. “Another man had come to the room. Maria was screaming from the bathroom, where she was when the murder occurred.”
Hemingway was wearing a light canvas jacket, which he took off and draped over Maria’s shoulders. “Are you all right, my dear?” he said to the girl in smooth Spanish.
Maria nodded, but her hands and shoulders were shaking.
“The child had locked herself in the bathroom,” said Leopoldina. “She would not come out for some minutes. She was very upset. The man who was with this man”—Leopoldina gestured toward the body—“had left by the time the other girls and I responded to Maria’s cries.”
“How did he leave?” said Hemingway. We both glanced at the open window. There was a twelve-foot drop to the alley, and no fire escape.
“He walked out,” said Leopoldina. “Several of us saw him.”
“Who was he?” said the writer.
The older whore hesitated. “Maria will tell you.”
“Tell us what happened, little one,” said Hemingway, taking Maria by the elbows and gently turning her away from the body and blood.
The young woman’s chest was convulsing with sobs, but after a moment—with Hemingway stroking her back through the jacket as if he were petting one of his cats—she was able to speak.
“This señor—this dead man—he was very quiet… he came up to the room with the valise you see there…”
The bag was on the floor, its contents scattered everywhere. Papers and notebooks lay on the carpet and on the bed itself, some soaking in pools of blood. I crouched slightly and saw a hypodermic needle and a 9-millimeter Luger under the bed, both evidently spilled from the bag. I touched nothing.
“Did he open the valise in front of you, Maria?” asked Hemingway.
“No, no, no,” said the girl. Her lustrous hair touched her cheeks as she shook her head. “He set the valise on the table. He… he did not want to… to make love immediately. He wanted to talk. To speak to me. He took off his shirt, you see…”
A blue blazer and white shirt were neatly draped over the back of a chair. The dark gray trousers were folded on the chair.
“An
d then?” prompted the writer. “What did he want to talk about?”
“He spoke of how lonely he was,” said the girl, taking deep, slow breaths now. She did not look in the direction of the body. “How far from home he was.”
“He spoke in Spanish?”
“Yes, Señor Papa. Very poor Spanish. I know a little English, but he insisted on speaking to me in bad Spanish.”
“But he also spoke English?”
“Yes, Señor Papa. He negotiated with Señorita Leopoldina in English.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
Maria shook her head.
Hemingway stooped, lifted the billfold from the dead man’s trousers, removed a passport and a card, and handed them to me. The passport was American, in the name of Martin Kohler. The card was an able-bodied seaman’s union card made out to the same name.
“Did he tell you where his home was?” asked Hemingway.
Maria shook her head again. “No, Señor. He was just telling me how lonely it was on the large boat and how long it would be until he would see his family again.”
“How long?” said Hemingway.
The girl shrugged. “I was not really listening. He said something about months.”
“Which boat?”
The girl pointed to the window. There was a hint of moonlight on the bay glimmering between the brick walls there. “The big one. The large one that came in yesterday.”
Hemingway glanced at me. The Southern Cross.
Leopoldina la Honesta rubbed her arms. “Señor Papa, we have not called the police yet, but we must any minute. I do not allow such things in my house.”
Hemingway nodded. “Maria, tell us about the man who came to the room and the murder.”
The girl nodded and looked at the far wall as if the scene were being projected there. “This man was talking. He was sitting on the bed in his underwear… as you see him. I was thinking that this would take too long, but that he must have paid very much to have so much time with me. There was a knock. The door was unlocked, but the man went to the door to open it. He gestured me into the bathroom, but I left the door open a crack.”