‘Yeah, I’ve met Gerard. But they what?’
‘You see?’ Blake said. ‘It makes no sense – I mean why me? – so there must be something else to it. But what? And why me?’
‘Yeah,’ Welker said. ‘Why you indeed? Let’s think this out.’
‘I know what I think. I think I want to go somewhere else. Back to Pennsylvania. Raise goats. Take up knitting.’
‘You knit?’
Blake shrugged. ‘I could learn.’
Welker thought for a second. Whatever it was had truly shaken Blake up. Knitting? ‘Just what did Gerard say?’ Welker asked.
Blake found that he remembered the conversation almost word for word, and he repeated it to Welker, with added gestures. ‘And then he said I could start Saturday, there’s going to be a big Communist Party meeting at the Finnish Sailors’ Hall on 96th and Lex, and I should just go and see what it’s like. He added a few words about Negros and Jews and fellow-travelers, whatever they are, and said he knew I wouldn’t fall for any of their crap and I should come and tell him what I think on Monday. What am I going to think? How do I get out of this?’ Blake clasped his hands together but managed to refrain from wringing them.
‘Well, you know,’ Welker said, ‘it might be interesting to find out what their interest in the Commies is. I don’t see any problem.’
‘Well, I do,’ Blake told him. ‘I’ll be lying to two groups of people at once, and they don’t like people who lie to them.’
‘But you don’t actually have to lie – just sit and listen.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘But, you know – how much is he going to pay you for this?’
‘An extra five bucks a week.’
‘Ah. That could be a problem.’
‘How?’
‘You may have to turn that money over to us. You’re not allowed to take money from a person or group you’re surveilling. Your job is OK. I mean, that’s a job. But this extra – I don’t think you’ll be allowed to keep it. But don’t worry – since you’ll be doing extra work for us, I’ll raise your pay by five dollars to make up for it.’
‘So,’ Blake asked, ‘I have to give you the five dollars, but you’ll pay me five dollars more to make up for it? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘You’ve never worked for the government before, have you?’ Welker asked.
TWENTY-FIVE
Buttercup:
Things are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream;
Highlows pass as patent leathers;
Jackdaws strut in peacock’s feathers.
Captain (puzzled):
Very true,
So they do.
– Gilbert & Sullivan, HMS Pinafore
Four days later Blake came into the Figaro, looked around nervously until he spotted Welker at a table in the back, and headed over. ‘I am not happy,’ he said by way of greeting as he sat down. ‘I am not happy and I am frightened and I’m thinking I should go.’
‘Go where?’ Welker asked, leaning forward and looking attentive, his arms on the table, his hands cradled around his cappuccino.
‘Philadelphia, maybe.’
‘Philadelphia?’
‘Maybe Kansas City. Los Angeles. Hawaii. Hong Kong. Somewhere not here.’
It was Saturday afternoon and the Figaro was full of uptown types who wanted to see the artists and poets and bohemians, or who had acquired berets and torn sweaters so they could pretend, just for the afternoon, that they were the artists and poets and bohemians. Blake and Welker were sitting at a table near the back, next to the giant bell-shaped espresso machine, which looked to Blake like a Buck Rogers rocket ship and made alarming hissing noises. Blake kept glancing nervously over at it while they talked.
‘Why?’ Welker asked. ‘I mean, why do you want to go away? What happened? You see someone? Something? Someone do something to scare you?’
‘I am not a courageous man,’ Blake said.
‘I know and that’s OK,’ Welker told him. ‘For a man who is not courageous you’ve been plenty brave enough so far.’
‘That’s because you keep telling me there’s no danger. And I keep almost believing you. But not this time, I think.’
‘So you did see something?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘OK, then what?’
Blake took a deep breath and looked away from the hissing espresso machine. ‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘I was in the front room of the 12th Street office waiting for Gerard, and—’
‘Wait a second – what 12th Street office?’
‘You didn’t know? Gerard has this two-room office on 12th off Sixth Avenue. Second floor. Says “Indirect Investments Inc.” on the door. Whatever that is. Anyway, I was in the front room waiting for him ’cause he said he wanted to talk to me about the Communists and he came into the back room without going through the front – there’s a door in the hall that goes right to the back room, only it’s always kept locked. But this time he went in that way. And he had someone with him and he didn’t know I was there in the front room ’cause I hadn’t bothered turning the light on.’
‘What other guy?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t know his voice.’
‘So you just sat there?’
‘I didn’t want to interrupt him. I was early anyway.’
‘OK. So …’
‘So after a little talk about, you know, this and that, Gerard says to the other guy, who I don’t know who he is, he says the fall Buddha is to go.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I got no idea. Anyway the other guy says, “For sure?” and Gerard says yeah, he just got the phone call from Weiss and the Buddha is a go, whatever it is.’
‘The “Buddha”? That’s what he said?’
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘In the fall?’
‘I think so. I was listening through a door, so maybe not. But I think so. It ain’t going to be fall for a while yet, so maybe it don’t mean the season. Or maybe he said something different. But that’s what I heard, I think.’
Welker waited patiently for maybe fifteen seconds and then said, ‘That’s it?’
‘Yeah. ’Cause that’s when I left.’
‘You just walked out?’
‘Yeah. Before they knew I was there. I almost panicked and just kept going, but that wouldn’t have been smart. So I went downstairs and walked around the block a couple of times and then went back in, like it was the first time, you know?’
‘What is there about the Buddha that scared you?’
‘It’s not Buddha, it’s Weiss. He said a guy named Weiss called him.’
‘So?’
‘So when he said the name I remembered. Weiss. All at once I remembered. That was the name of the guy who was the leader of the … you know … who killed – who beat up …’
‘Son of a bitch! Finally!’ Welker slapped the edge of the table, and Blake jumped. ‘Sorry,’ Welker said.
‘I’m glad you’re happy,’ Blake said. ‘I’m scared. I scare easy.’
‘Come on,’ Welker said. ‘Weiss, whoever he is, wasn’t even there. Just a voice on the phone. Not even that, ’cause you didn’t hear him. He could have been calling from Jersey City.’
‘He could take the Hudson Tubes, be here in half an hour.’
‘And again, he doesn’t know who you are. Hell, he doesn’t even know you exist.’
‘And I intend to keep it that way.’
Welker sighed and finished his cappuccino. ‘Well, you went back up to talk to Gerard, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So, what did you talk about?’
‘Oh, yeah. Well first I gave him the cards which he asked me to print up.’
‘The cards?’
‘Yeah. Here, I brought you one.’ Blake fished around in his jacket pocket and handed Welker a pasteboard card. ‘I thought you’d want to see it, ’cause I think it’s kind of strange.’
> Welker took the card and examined it front and back. The back was blank. On the front:
W P A
Having paid his dues for the year 1938
- - - - - - - - - - – - - - - – - - - - - - -
Is a member in good standing.
The Workers Party of America
New York City Chapter
no_____ _______Sec
‘What’s this?’ Welker demanded. ‘You made this up?’
‘Yeah, you know, at the print shop. Gerard gave me the copy and asked me to print them up for him. I did about fifty. It’s like a membership card for Communists. Which, like I say, is a bit weird, considering.’
‘It is,’ Welker agreed. ‘Why would the head of the local Nazis be giving you a Commie membership card to be printed up?’
‘I don’t know,’ Blake said seriously. ‘I’m supposed to give them to Lehman at the next meeting.’
‘Lehman? You mean the, ah, substitute Otto Lehman?’
‘Yeah, he’s one of the big shots at the meetings. Which is also pretty weird when you think about it. What do you think they’d do if they knew he was a phony?’
‘Let us not find out,’ Welker said. ‘Not right now, anyhow.’
‘And Gerard is upping the ante for me, like I was afraid he would. Now he wanted me to hang around after the meeting and find out where they live – to follow them home or something. Not the regular people, like in the audience, but the important ones, like on the stage. I told him I’d be real bad at that. Which I would.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said that was OK, he had a better idea. He would have me point out the leaders to someone outside as we left, and this other guy would do the following. I said if he could work that out that would be OK. To tell the truth I was just anxious to get the hell out of there before Weiss came through the door.’
The waiter, who had been studiously ignoring them, as is the custom with the Figaro staff, chose now to come over and look expectantly at Blake. ‘You want something?’
‘Coffee,’ Blake told him.
‘Cappuccino? Latte? Au lait?’ the waiter asked, pencil poised over his pad, which was merely a prop since he never actually wrote anything down.
‘Just coffee,’ Blake said. ‘American coffee.’
‘Maybe a sweet roll?’
‘Just coffee.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ the waiter agreed. ‘Just coffee.’ And he went off toward the kitchen.
‘Well,’ Welker said after a minute, ‘that tells us something. Not very useful probably, but reassuring.’
‘How’s that?’ Blake asked.
‘Your Nazi friends—’
‘Not my friends!’ Blake interrupted in a forceful undertone.
‘Yeah, sorry. The German-American Bund members with whom I am cajoling you to associate. Better?’
‘Yeah, well,’ Blake said. ‘What about them?’
‘They probably don’t have a plant in the FBI,’ Welker said.
‘How’s that?’
‘I’m just thinking out loud,’ Welker said. ‘I figure if they had someone in the Bureau, which I thought was possible ’cause Hoover don’t give crap about Nazis, then they’d already have the addresses of every Commie in the country, along with their shoe sizes and where they get their hair cut. ’Cause he’s sure got his nose in a twist about Commies.’
‘His nose in a twist?’
‘Yeah.’ Welker nodded. ‘My mother used to say that, which is where I got it. Come to think of it I have no idea where she picked it up. It means like—’
‘I can see what it means, I just never heard it before.’
Welker drank the last of his cappuccino and waved at the waiter, who was just coming out of the kitchen, and pointed down at his empty cup. The waiter nodded.
‘So the question is,’ Welker went on, ‘why do the little baby Führers in the Bund want to know where the Commies live? And what’s with the membership cards? What do they have in mind?’
‘The cards I don’t know,’ Blake told him. ‘I asked but he just kind of smiled and said don’t worry about it. And about finding where the Commies live, maybe Gerard and his buddies are just looking for more people to beat up.’
Welker shook his head. ‘Any random passer-by on the street will do for that,’ he told Blake. ‘Just call him a Jew or a Commie and start swinging. Draw a crowd, excite the faithful. When I went to see him—’
‘When you what?’ Blake interrupted.
‘Oh yeah,’ Welker told him. ‘A couple of days ago. Gerard thinks I’m a hotshot ex-Army ordnance expert, and he’s all hot to recruit me. So far I’ve agreed that the Jews are taking our jobs and that we shouldn’t fight another war in Europe and he’s hinted that it would be nice if he had a source for explosives and someone who knows how to use them. I don’t know what he has in mind, but I rather think it would be good idea if I find out.’
‘You don’t want me—’
‘To do the finding out? No. I’m going to act all hard to get, and he’s going to lure me in by telling me all about it. If you don’t want to know something people go out of their way to tell you about it. That’s rule seven of the detecting business. You go on with what you were doing, and don’t worry about Weiss. I’ll take care of Weiss.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know yet. It probably won’t actually be me, but one of my associates. And we’ll work out the details when we find out just who he is.’
‘I still want to go to Pittsburgh,’ Blake said plaintively.’
‘You don’t know anyone in Pittsburgh,’ Welker told him.
‘I could make friends.’
‘Stay,’ Welker said. ‘Make friends here.’
TWENTY-SIX
Everybody needs something to believe in …
I believe I’ll have another drink.
– W. C. Fields
Restaurant Dimanche on Georgetown’s M Street was housed in a red-brick building that George Washington would have been surprised to learn he slept in. It was certainly old enough, built, according to the brass plaque, in 1763, but for a couple of decades after the War of American Independence it had been a very exclusive club staffed with high-yellow ladies of negotiable virtue. During the War of Northern Aggression, as the proprietor of the house called it after he fled to the temporary safety of Atlanta, Georgia, ownership somehow passed to the Breckhouse family, and by the 1890s Jeffrey Breckhouse the Third was telling Jeffrey Breckhouse the Fourth how General Washington had spent the night – heck, the week – with his great-great-grandpappy in this very house on his way to Philadelphia to accept the presidency.
The restaurant had occupied the building for the past decade under the supervision of chef Michel Martine; Martine had apprenticed under Escoffier, and had been lured to Georgetown from the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo by Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who complained about the lack of decent French restaurants anywhere around the capital. There was no sign outside announcing the existence of the Dimanche; if you couldn’t find it you obviously had no business being there, and in any case you were not welcome without a reservation. It was weathering the Depression effortlessly – there was always money to be found for wining and dining Congressmen and government functionaries.
It was just eight o’clock on a rainy Tuesday evening as Lord Geoffrey Saboy’s Rolls Royce pulled up across from the door of Restaurant Dimanche. The rain had lessened to a light drizzle for the moment but the clouds glowering overhead in the gathering dusk threatened a more substantial wetting in the near future. Garrett, who was doing his chauffeur imitation again this evening, dashed around the car to open the passenger door for His Lordship and Lady Patricia and made a show of holding an oversize black umbrella over them as they exited and guiding them to the front door. ‘You may disappear until ten thirty,’ Geoffrey told him, ‘then return and loiter around at some discreet distance and in the fullness of time I shall whistle for you.’
Straightening
his chauffeur’s cap, Garrett gave a quick semi-salute. ‘Kiel vi deziras, mian sinjoron.’ Then furled the umbrella and marched back to the car.
‘Tre bona, dankon,’ Geoffrey called after him before turning to follow Patricia into the restaurant.
‘What on earth was that?’ Patricia asked.
‘What?’
‘That “bankum dankum” stuff?’
‘Oh – Esperanto. We’ve been practicing it. It’s due to become the universal language, you know.’
‘Really?’
‘Everyone says so.’
‘No,’ Patricia said, shaking her head firmly. ‘No, they don’t.’
‘No?’
‘Trust me.’
‘But once it’s adopted it will put an end to wars and everyone will be kind to their mothers.’
‘Honestly …’ Patricia said. Then she turned and smiled at the approaching head waiter. ‘Good evening, Arnold.’
‘Evening, Lady Patricia, your lordship. Your guest awaits you in the bar. Will you join him or shall I seat you now?’
‘We’ll take our table now, I think,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Bring our guest over once we’re seated.’
Two minutes later Jacob Welker, a pâté-smeared cracker in one hand and the remains of a Scotch and water in the other, followed the head waiter over to their corner table. He set down the cracker as Geoffrey rose to greet him, and they silently shook hands, each soberly surveying the other. After a moment Welker said, ‘You haven’t changed. Good to see you again.’
‘I rather think I have, you know,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Ever so slightly. As have you. But that’s all right. We were … young. It’s been too long.’
‘Yes,’ Welker agreed. ‘Although it didn’t seem so at the time. Being young, I mean.’ Then he turned to Patricia and took her hand. ‘It is, I can honestly say, a pleasure to see you again,’ he said, raising the hand to his lips and miming a kiss.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘how courtly. But you two, you haven’t seen each other in – what? – ten or fifteen years? And you just shake hands, one – two? With a “hello – good to see you”? Isn’t that carrying British reserve a bit too far? And one of you not even British?’
The Bells of Hell Page 20