It could be that Eldon was only keeping an avuncular eye on his wife’s niece and her odd companion. It could be but it wasn’t. Not the way Eldon was casting a calculative eye on the girl. Not the way Feather reacted to men old enough to be her uncle. It didn’t necessarily have to be a thing between the two. And it was this riding Steve as he steered Oriole’s old boat over to Hollywood. There was the matter of Haig’s interest in Eldon Moritz, they’d gone chummy fast for a couple of professed strangers. You could never know who was undercover these days, it added to the hazards of what once had been a comparatively simple occupation. One item stood out with clarity, with Feather sandwiched between Haig and Eldon, she was as trustworthy as an adder.
4
The small parking lot attached to the Prague wasn’t very popular on a Saturday night. A few cars stood forlorn in the angular shadows. A slovenly boy ambled out of a wooden kiosk to take thirty-five cents from Steve in exchange for a yellow ticket.
After the lonely lot, the café was pleasant. The mustached man and towhead boy were making sounds of music. Through the candlelight Steve spotted Janni and Reuben against the wall. He headed for them, ignoring the beckoning eye of the brass-haired woman at the cash register.
“Sorry to be so late.”
Reuben and Janni were already eating something Hungarian and their salad greens were strong with garlic.
“We did not expect you,” Janni said complacently. She’d cleaned up somewhere—in his room?—she looked scrubbed.
“I said I’d be here.” He told the waiter, “Bring me the same.” He put his elbows on the table. “When I say I’ll be somewhere, I’m there.”
“Ha,” she mouthed. She was looking for trouble.
And he wasn’t in any shape to take it. “What does that mean?”
She slanted her black eyes. “It means, Ha Ha Ha.”
“Skip it,” Rube murmured.
“Why should I skip it? After those many times when I have waited on the corner, and waited, and waited, for the very dependable Herr Winterich. Ha Ha.”
Why this? For God’s sake why? She’d kept the past out of it so far, brutally so. Why drag it in tonight? Was she striking out of fear, fear that his delay meant he’d caught up with Davidian? So he’d kept her waiting sometimes, so he’d had to cut appointments without warning, it was over and done with. She’d known he wasn’t a free agent.
She shoveled in another mouthful. “And so,” she explained to Rube noisily, “when I make an appointment with Herr Winterich, no longer do I expect him. Maybe he will come, maybe not. Who knows?” She licked a bit of gravy off her finger. She didn’t say, Who cares? It was implicit.
Reuben tried to quiet the waters. “How was your day, Steve?”
“Just dandy.” The waiter set a bowl of potato soup in front of him. “I went to a funeral.”
She stopped eating.
“The guy at the airport.”
“Was your friend?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t explain why he’d denied him heretofore. To Janni he said, “You remember Frederick Grasse.” They’d had him to supper, he’d furnished the schnapps.
She remembered too well. “Albion. He brought you a pair of shoes. American shoes. He is dead? How?” She cut the word like a whip.
“Heart failure.”
Over his shoulder the brassy woman called, “Ah,” as if she’d been searching for Steve. “I have news for you.”
He didn’t tip her off to silence. He preferred Janni to hear the news, whatever it was. “Yeah?”
“But it is Bona who should tell you. I asked questions.” She waved imperiously to one of the waiters. It wasn’t the one attending their table but it could have been. They were all of a type.
“Bona,” she said, “this is the man who asked, you know.”
Bona twitched his mustache. “It is like this,” he began. The other waiter moved in, snatched away Steve’s soup dish and replaced it with the goulash. Bona glared his comrade away.
“Wanda was asking about the ruble.” Wanda was the woman nodding her glittering pompadour.
“Where did you get it?”
“This I am telling you.” Bona wasn’t going to have his moment sucked away by undue haste. “I am in the kitchen waiting for the order to be served and the talk turns to Russia. Quite naturally, you understand. There is at the time a dishwasher, a starved dog who works cheap, you understand, because he can eat his fill.”
Janni began mopping her plate vigorously with a lump of bread.
“But this man says he is in possession of rubles. This I do not believe. He dries his hands and his arms and he proves it to me.” Bona took from his hip pocket a wallet. From it, with care, he extracted the slip of paper. “This one he presents to me.”
He allowed Steve to handle it.
“When did he work here?” Steve passed the bill to Janni, let her see for herself. Bona tried to figure without success; Wanda thought it was maybe a month ago. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t keep records on cheap dishwashers.
“You don’t know where he lived?”
They didn’t.
“His name?”
“Jake. Just Jake.”
The ruble came back to the waiter. He was folding it when Steve said, “It’s a phony.”
“How?” The man’s face fell apart.
“Counterfeit.”
Bona didn’t believe. He examined it on one side and the other and then he put it away as if he suspected Steve of pulling a fast one. Steve said, “Thanks for the information,” to the disappearing apron.
“You’re sure?” Wanda frowned.
“I’m sure. Makes them himself.”
She didn’t follow the waiter, she trailed back to her own corner.
Steve began to stow away his goulash.
“So?” Janni was furious. “He works as a dishwasher to get enough to eat.”
“Maybe. Maybe for some other purpose.”
“He works as a dishwasher,” Janni said heatedly. “He is working, not making money.”
“Who said different?” Steve finished his plate.
Janni dropped her anger while the waiter brought the dessert. But before he was out of earshot, she returned to the fray. “Why do you make trouble for him? Asking questions of these people? Getting all of them to spy on him?”
Steve said, “I wouldn’t have to if you’d tell me where he is.”
“I have told you—”
“It doesn’t matter any more,” he cut in. “Feather’s getting the dope for me.” He gave meaning to the lie by a look at his watch. “Remind me to call her after dinner.”
Janni disbelieved but she couldn’t deny. She thought she alone knew the way to Davidian yet she couldn’t be sure. Because Steve knew her so well, he could be amused by the act she began to put on. A light raillery against Feather as an opener, followed by a mockery of Steve for being led along the garden path by a simple girl who didn’t know enough to open her umbrella in the rain. For the main show, a biting scorn of Steve, who could slump so low from an established reputation as a huntsman to be forced to depend on misinformation from a stupid animal like Feather. She threw in the implication that it must be Steve’s declining powers as a male which could make him interested in such a milk-and-water specimen as Feather.
As always, Steve let her perform. When she broke off to suck the last of the chocolate from her spoon, he tried a point of his own. Janni knew more of local conditions than he. “So she’s young, untried, an amateur, I’ll grant you. But her uncle is Eldon Moritz.”
It was a good try. Janni stopped pretending. It appeared that this was news to her. Unpleasant news. She asked indifferently, “Who is Eldon Moritz?”
She knew who he was all right. She’d recognized the name without delay. But Steve gave her the full answer.
“He’s a movie big shot, lives in a comfortable twenty-nine-room cottage up Benedict Canyon, complete with swimming pool, butler, unlisted telephone, everything you’ve seen in his
movies. That’s where I’m heading for tonight. To get my information in an easy chair with a good highball, not in some crummy hall room with a gun in one hand and a dollar bill in the other.”
She said viciously, “You don’t know what you are doing. You are a fool. But you have always been a fool.” She was making words, nothing but words. Because she had no way to stop him from going to Feather. And she was afraid of Feather. She spat, “You trust any halunke.”
“No,” he said deliberately. “I learned better than that. A long time ago.”
Reuben wasn’t enjoying this. He was trying to act as if he weren’t there but he couldn’t go on endlessly drinking out of an empty coffee cup.
Steve dropped Janni. He said to Rube cheerfully, “How about ordering a brandy and another round of coffee. I’ve got to make that call.”
He had to pass the counter to get to the phone. The woman called to him, “Mr. Winterich.” He hadn’t given her his name. “You understand I had no idea this dishwasher was important.” They were all so fearful of making a mistake, even an inadvertent one. “I am in the kitchen so little, I don’t even know who is hired.”
He told her, “It isn’t important. It could have been but it isn’t.”
Some of the worry lines went out of her powdered face. “If I’d had an idea—”
“Sure, sure,” he assured her. Tell it to Schmidt or Oriole. He wasn’t interested. He shut himself in the booth and called Feather. She’d reached home; she said she was alone, the others had gone to a movie. Her voice sounded farther away than Hollywood to Beverly. But he gathered she had something to tell him. Something she called important. He couldn’t miss any bets. “I’ll be there within the hour.”
The woman was still chewing on her worry. She halted him as he left the booth. “You don’t think—”
He stopped to invent. “The guy who taught me this business advised me not to think. Leave that to the number ones, he used to say. That’s the rule I follow.” It would give her something else to ponder. It might keep her from confessing her error.
The hot coffee was poured. A cheap brandy stood in liqueur glasses at each of the three places. Janni’s glowering anxiety tightened her dark brows. Steve sat down and tasted the brandy before speaking. She’d never ask. It was good to keep her waiting; because he wanted to hurt her and because he couldn’t; because he could only strike with these petty twigs.
He said finally to Rube, “I’m sorry I can’t give you kids the car. But I’ll need it to get to Benedict Canyon. I’ll probably be late. Think you can amuse yourself?”
Her violence burst out. She shoved her chair from the table, shouted, “I can amuse myself without your mangy car. I am going to work.”
Rube tried to protest but she had no words for him. She lingered only long enough to down the brandy. You learned in the gutters not to waste food or drink. And she was gone, her red coat a streaming danger signal behind her.
Rube was on his feet, not believing this.
Steve said, “Let her go.”
“But—”
“She gets that way. Temper.”
Rube sat down. Not accepting Steve’s dictum. Resenting it. Resenting Steve. He couldn’t hold it back for long. “What the hell’s the matter with you tonight? There was nothing wrong with Janni until you sat down here and started needling. No wonder she got mad. Every time you opened your mouth, you socked her.”
He didn’t want to scrap with Rube. And he certainly didn’t want, as if he were a spoiled child, to say that she’d started it. Even more he didn’t want the soldier getting serious over Janni. He maintained a calm objectivity. Or tried for it. “You forget, I’ve known that piece a fairly long time. She’s not the gay, charming kid she’s giving you a picture of. Believe me, she isn’t.”
“So you can sock her because she’s come up from the gutter?”
“Up from the gutter to Skid Row.”
Rube’s fists knotted.
“Okay,” Steve said quickly. “That’s not why. I don’t care whether she’s Skid Row or Bel Air. That has nothing to do with what she is. There’s plenty of her kind both places. It’s what she’s doing to Davidian that burns me up.”
“Protecting him?” She’d been at Rube and he’d listened.
“Protecting him? Yeah. From the only guy that can help him, the only friend he’s got.”
“You?”
“Me.”
“You and God and Stalin.”
“You’re talking like Janni.” It wasn’t Rube’s fault. Janni could take any of them, make pretzels out of them. “Who the hell does she think she is, making Davidian’s decision?”
“If he wants to see you, why doesn’t he? He’s all over Hollywood, washing dishes, watching Santa Claus.” Rube’s voice was deadly. “Being careful he’s two jumps ahead of you.”
Steve downed his coffee. He couldn’t give Reuben the whole picture. He was upset about having it like this but there was nothing more he could do or say now. “Sorry. Maybe you’re right.” He pulled out his wallet, replaced it when Reuben said with austere determination, “This is mine.”
And Reuben could be right. Davidian did know that Stefan Winterich was in town; even if Janni had withheld the information, he couldn’t help knowing, his ear was against too many of the right keyholes. Steve couldn’t be sure of Davidian, you couldn’t be sure of any man whose life had been a lie for twenty years. Or more. Davidian might have been born a moral contortionist.
How could a man ever be sure of any other man? This was the age of treachery, the age when the lie was made dogma, when evasion was a sanctified virtue and ignorance a sacrament. It was the age of words but the words no longer had meaning, they had been subverted into the gibberish of the new jungle. There was no more honor; how could Davidian be an honorable man? Loyalty was only a banner to be dragged through the slime; how could Davidian be loyal? In the time of Davidian, there were no verities. No, Steve could trust Davidian no more than he could trust his beloved or his friend. Such trust was archaic, there was no longer a place for such reactionary weakness.
The night was milder than it had been earlier. Steve tossed his coat on the seat beside him and spurred out of the lot. In the small light of the kiosk the slovenly boy continued to pore over his comic book. He didn’t look up to find out if the man and the car belonged together.
Steve drove too fast out Sunset to Benedict Canyon. The canyon road lay in darkness and shadow, the road lamps were far apart, the moon and stars too distant for color. The Moritz gate was open and he pulled up to the front of the house. He left his hat with his coat in the car. He touched the discreet white button which caused chimes to sound within the palace. The house was dark save for the faint illumination of the hall. This could be Haig’s trap; he would not be surprised. But he’d had to find out.
Feather herself opened the door. When she saw it was he, she said, “Oh, Steve.”
The hopes he’d had out of hopelessness that she could deliver the goods, began falling. She couldn’t help him if she wanted to, she couldn’t even speak a definite hello. But he was here and he went inside. To hear what she had to offer.
She said, “I’m in the library,” and she led him towards the far room.
“Did you have any trouble breaking away from your party?”
“No. I said I must go home and rehearse. It’s true. I’m auditioning next week for a show.” She’d made it true. She’d cleared a space for work and she was wearing ballet slippers. Her hair was tied up with a black cord. It bobbed like a horse’s cropped tail.
The French windows were open to the gardens at the back. There’d be a blue pool, under moonlight now; bright striped umbrellas and chaise lounges for sun. Janni would have lived in peace and beauty here; this girl somehow seemed cramped in a confine of her own making, afraid to lay her hand on any of the richness. Was a dancer so single-minded? Idly he wondered if she could dance, if perhaps she would come alive in motion and music. He would never find out.
“Not now.” And he took his same place on the couch, waited for her to press against the same down-cushioned corner. She was fluttery, over being alone with him, over the trap? He said, “You’ve got something?”
She didn’t understand, she curled her hand over to the table where her horn-rimmed glasses were laid.
“On Davidian?”
She said, “Yes.” She was more contained with the horn-rims on.
“Well?”
Color flushed into her cheeks as she began. She was stalling for time. “He worked in Berlin, the Eastern zone. Very secret work. No one knows why he wanted to leave or how he managed it.” Her hair bobbed nervously. “But he did leave and he’s in Los Angeles. Naturally the F.B.I. wants to find him because they hope he’ll inform to them about Soviet plans. And the Soviets must find him first because they can’t be sure that he won’t be made to talk. They can’t trust him anyway because of the way he took leave from Berlin.” She said anxiously, “No one understands why he’s been hiding out from you. You were his friend.” She interrupted herself, “You know all this, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “But I don’t know where he is. Did you find out?”
The word broke sharp from the open French windows behind them. “No!”
It wasn’t this interruption which Feather was expecting. She turned as quickly, as startled as Steve. Janni was in the room; she came rapidly around the couch to Feather. “You must not tell him. Davidian escaped, he is free. You must not betray him to them.”
Feather turned uncertain eyes on Steve.
Janni demanded her attention. “Tell him nothing! He is a Coco.”
Bewilderment masked Feather.
Janni cried, “Don’t you understand? He is a Communist.” She said it plain, cold and plain, “A Communist agent.”
Davidian Report Page 15