Suspect Red

by L. M. Elliott

  Richard blanched. Not that good of a singer? Old Blue Eyes? The Sultan of Swoon? Sacrilege! But…maybe? Was it possible Richard could be a singer, a Sinatra-style crooner?

  Richard plopped back down into his seat as Vladimir started singing again, this time the Sinatra tune: “I’ve got a crush on youuuu, sweetie piiiiiiieee.” Then he hummed, pretending to play an invisible saxophone. When he started singing again, Richard joined in: “Could you coo, could you care, for a cunning cottage we could share.”

  They’d only just passed Baltimore, but Richard already felt a world away from home.

  “I miss all this,” Vladimir said quietly. “Look at that skyline. See over there? That needle sticking up higher than any of the other buildings? That’s the Chrysler Building. And to the left of it”—he pointed—“that’s the Empire State Building.” He sighed. “Look how the Brooklyn Bridge gleams in the moonlight—a big ol’ steel-and-cable spiderweb. Can you imagine building that thing back in the 1880s? We should walk across it tomorrow. In winds like this, it hums.”

  Shivering, Richard tightened his hold on the fire escape railing. They were staying across the East River from Manhattan in Brooklyn Heights, where Teresa’s friends lived. Vladimir had pulled them out onto the rickety, see-through catwalk of connecting ladders and landings. They were sitting, dangling their feet, five stories up, like it was a balcony or something. The darn thing swayed whenever one of them moved. But Richard wasn’t about to admit he was scared. And the view was worth the terror. If he didn’t freeze his butt off.

  A long lonely call of a foghorn drifted up to them, followed by an answering honk-hooooonnk. “Tugboats coming back in from getting tankers out,” Vlad explained. “You’ll see a bunch of them tomorrow when we go to the Statue of Liberty. They are shrimps, but they shove around the huge ships. Talk about a can-do attitude. There’s some kind of metaphor in them. Old Bradbury would come up with one for sure.”

  The boys stared at the inky waters.

  “Oh, man. Maybe I can get you down to the docks before we go back to DC. It’s so hip. You never heard so many languages. And there are guys from Senegal with tattoos all over, and Russians in pajama-like getups and Indonesians in sarungs. A bunch of them wear earrings, like Blackbeard.” Vladimir pushed his coat collar up around his ears. “I wish it weren’t so cold. We could go roller-skating on the esplanade along the river if it wasn’t for the wind. It gives you a great view of the city.”

  Teeth chattering, Richard managed to answer, “So m-m-much to s-see.”

  “That ain’t the half of it, buddy boy! There’s Birdland, the jazz club. And Rockefeller Center. Those Rockettes…” He whistled. “But we’ll cover as much as we can. Hey!” He punched Richard. “We’ll be like Frankie and Gene Kelly in that movie On the Town. Remember?” He started singing, “New York, New York, a helluva town. The people ride in a hole in the groun’.”

  He threw his arms out for the verse’s finale and was basically shouting, “New York, New Yorrrrrk. It’s a hell-uv-a towwwwwnnnn!” just as his mother knocked loudly on the window.

  “Vladi! Get inside!”

  “Busted!” Vladimir grinned. “It really bugs her when I climb out onto these things. But I should remember what Dad told me: Nazis threw people she loved off fire escapes in Czechoslovakia.”

  As he crawled back in, he apologized. “Sorry, Mom.”

  “You should really be sorry for singing that song for anyone in the street below to hear, young man,” joked one of their hosts, the husband of Jane Bowles, whose play they’d come to see. He wagged his finger at Vladimir and winked.

  Vladimir had told Richard earlier that Paul Bowles was a composer, a protégé of Aaron Copland. He’d come back to New York from Morocco to write the play’s instrumental music and watch over rehearsals. He’d done the same for a guy named Tennessee Williams and a play called The Glass Menagerie.

  Richard didn’t know any of those names, but he didn’t let on. Vladimir had seemed so proud to know the guy.

  “I’m already under enough suspicion being friends with Maestro Copland,” Mr. Bowles continued, still with mirth in his voice. But he grew more serious when he looked at Teresa and said, “Can you believe they canceled his performing the Lincoln Portrait for Eisenhower’s inaugural just because that one moronic congressman asked if he was a commie? Could it be because he is friends with Russia’s Shostakovich? Don’t they realize artists connect over borders without politics? God Almighty! Things are only getting worse with McCarthy.”

  He turned back to Vladimir. “You see, Leonard Bernstein wrote the music you were singing, Vladi. And now he’s supposedly a pinko, too.” He ruffled Vladimir’s hair. “That little serenade of yours could bring the FBI jumping out of trash trucks and straight in here, waving their notebooks.”

  Richard frowned. The man was kidding around, yeah, but he was still ridiculing the bureau. Richard pressed his lips together to keep from saying something rude. He was these people’s guest. But he sure didn’t like the composer’s attitude. And he knew Don wouldn’t either. In fact, it was the kind of thing that might spark one of his dad’s alarming outbursts of anger.

  Richard glanced over at Vladimir, who opened his mouth—probably to tell Mr. Bowles that Don was a G-man—but his wife spoke up too quickly for that.

  “Don’t be silly, darling. If they come, it’ll be for me. After all, in Hoover’s and McCarthy’s eyes I check many subversive boxes.” She held up a finger with each label she named. “I’m Jewish, alcoholic, a Communist—and I write about lesbians.” She laughed sarcastically. She leaned toward a table lamp and in a stage whisper said into the light’s shade, “Isn’t that right? You getting all that?”

  Quickly, Teresa put her arm through her friend’s. “Richard’s father is an FBI agent, you know. He is quite a lovely man. You’d like him, miláčku.”

  The playwright eyed Richard. “No, I don’t believe I would.” Even though she said it with a smile, Richard bristled and felt all the freckles on his face burn. Well, this short, snotty woman was someone to tell Don about, for sure.

  She picked up her cane. “Time to go, players. The curtain rises in a few hours.”

  The two women headed for the door arm in arm, slowly to allow for the playwright’s limp. She kept chattering all the way down the hall and into the see-through cage elevator. “Tennessee was so helpful in reading the different draft versions of my final scene. I had such a hard time deciding which ending I preferred. Casting was an ordeal, too. I’m still not sure we got that right. There was this young man who auditioned for the lover, Lionel. I remember his name because he was quite beautiful—James Dean. But he was too normal, not sufficiently anguished for the part. Still, I’m not sure the boy we picked captures the role either….”

  The playwright didn’t stop talking in the cab. Richard would have given anything for a notebook. But in his mind he repeated the names she brought up to burn the list in his memory: composer Benjamin Britten and a bunch of writers named Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, W. H. Auden. Some old guy advocating civil rights named W. E. B. Du Bois. They all seemed to live nearby.

  Sitting in the theater, watching the production of In the Summer House, Richard felt a weird mixture of guilt and smugness when one of her characters said, “I have the strangest feeling about you….I feel that you are plotting something.”

  “So, what did you think of her?”

  Richard had a mouthful of warm roasted chestnuts he was eating from a bag. After climbing up and down the twenty-two-story-high Statue of Liberty, they’d come back across the waters on a ferry. As soon as they landed at Battery Park, they’d purchased the sweet nuts from a street vendor, his truck a wonderful warm caldron of steam. Richard had wanted to crawl into it. He felt frozen solid. Winds had hit Bedloe’s Island so brutally that the statue shivered as they stood inside her.

  “Amazing,” he mumbled, as he finished chewing. “I didn’t realize that she’s completely hollow, like a big h
uge bell.”

  “Yup. The statue’s hull is only the thickness of two pennies. Can you believe? Maybe I should become a sculptor.”

  Richard laughed. He’d come to realize that Vladimir just kind of wanted to be anything that was awesome and hip.

  “And the doll ahead of us on those stairs wasn’t so bad either, was she?”

  Richard blushed, remembering how Vladimir had caught him glancing up the skirts of the pretty girl ahead of them. He didn’t mean to, honest. The spiral stairs were just so narrow and steep, everyone climbing them was on top of one another. When she stepped up, his head was basically at her ankles. He switched the subject to the swirling steps. “That staircase was unbelievable.”

  “You know, they were thinking they’d have to fill her with sand to keep her from falling over until someone got the bright idea to ask Gustave Eiffel to figure out something different. She’s balanced and braced like the Eiffel Tower. You should see that someday, too, Rich. It’s…it’s…extraordinaire, as Parisians would say—how something that delicate-looking could stand so strong.”

  “Wait. You’ve seen the Eiffel Tower, too?” Vladimir had told him a lot about London and Prague. All Richard had been able to educate him about were the Delaware beaches, Monticello, the Smithsonian Castle, and Luray Caverns. “Is there any place you haven’t seen?”

  “Are you joking me? The world! I want to go to Istanbul and Cairo and Hong Kong. And Copenhagen. Oh, and Saint Petersburg—I mean Leningrad.”

  “Russia? For real?”

  “Sure! Saint Petersburg, anyway. The Winter Palace is supposed to be as great as Versailles. Hopefully, someday, Dad will have a diplomatic mission there, and I can tag along.”

  They sat down on a wrought iron bench, looking back across the churned-gray waters toward the statue, the Brooklyn Bridge to their left. Richard finished his last chestnut. They’d been surprisingly delicious. But he was ready to get back inside a building now. “When are we supposed to meet your mom?”

  “She said she’d be here at three o’clock.” Vladimir pulled his glove back to check his wristwatch, and then wound it. “About twenty minutes. We got here faster than I thought we would. Mom’s always late, too.”

  They both hunched down and crossed their arms, tucking their hands under their armpits for extra warmth.

  “This is stupid,” Vladimir grumbled within a few minutes. “I could have walked us back across the bridge to the Heights. We don’t need a keeper to hold our hands to cross the street!”

  Richard shrugged. “Yeah. Moms. Whatcha gonna do?” Frankly, though, he’d been stunned at what Teresa had allowed. Abigail never would have put the two fourteen-year-olds on a ferry to cross a harbor alone. Especially not when all those boisterous, pushy people crowded the dock. But the whole trip had been like that—new liberties and new sights. The three days had been a blast. He slowly scanned the vista ahead of him, taking a mental snapshot.

  That’s when he noticed a man and woman walking slowly along the promenade’s railing, arguing. She was getting kind of riled. She shook her fist at the guy. Richard focused on them. Wait a second. The woman looked a lot like Teresa.

  “Hey, Vlad?” He elbowed his friend. But Vladimir was already sitting up and staring in that direction. His oddly silent alertness kept Richard quiet, too. The boys just watched as the man talked and Teresa seemed to calm. Then the man pulled an envelope out of his breast pocket and handed it to her. She put it in her purse. He tugged on the brim of his fedora in good-bye and walked away.

  Teresa remained, looking out at the bay, the silk floral scarf she’d tied over her hair flapping in the wind. She pulled a handkerchief from her coat pocket and dabbed at her eyes.

  Without a word, Vladimir stood and walked quickly toward his mother. Richard followed.

  “Mom?” Vladimir called.

  Teresa turned, startled, surprise and worry on her face. But when she spotted them, her expression morphed as quickly as a seasoned actress’s. She flashed a big beauty-queen smile, dazzling enough for everyone in the park to see.

  “Drahoušek,” she called dramatically, “how was Lady Liberty?”

  She tucked one arm through Vladimir’s and then reached for Richard with the other, so the three of them walked side-by-side-by-side. “I hope Vladi didn’t talk your ear off, Richard. He knows so much trivia about her. The nose is three feet long…”

  “Four and a half feet,” interrupted Vladimir.

  “…with two hundred steps to her crown…”

  “Three hundred fifty-four, Mom.”

  “Ah, you see?” She squeezed Richard’s arm. “Vladi knows everything! It is a marvel, though, isn’t it, that statue? Like being inside a giant dressmaker’s dummy. We see her ribs that hold her copper skin.”

  Richard couldn’t believe Vladimir wasn’t asking about the man. Or the envelope he had given her that Teresa now carried in her purse. Richard’s own curiosity was choking him. But Teresa was chitchatting so fast and with such animation, there wasn’t room for questions. Perhaps that was her point.

  “Now, on the way back we need to stop by Mr. Miller’s house. He lives just a few blocks away from Jane on Willow Street. A fantastic playwright, Richard.” She turned to him. “Do you know The Crucible?” But she didn’t wait for a reply. “It opened last spring. It is about the Salem witch trials, and, of course, a metaphor for other things. Fear, conformity, mob-mentality politics.” She was panting a little as she spoke, both from the cold and the velocity of her chatter. “Anyway, poor Arthur is having terrible trouble getting a passport from the State Department to go to Brussels for a Belgian premiere of his play. He is hoping Vladi’s father can help convince the New York office to grant him the necessary visa.”

  “Why would Dad have to help with that?” Vladimir asked.

  She lowered her voice. “There are new regulations that deny passports to people believed to be supporting the Communist movement. It seems some people think a play about a witch hunt is a slap at McCarthy and a danger to his crusade against the Reds. Such terrible power for a mere play.” She smiled. Or was it a smirk?

  Could whatever she carried in that envelope from the mystery man have something to do with that? But she’d probably have said so if it did. Wouldn’t she? Richard had to fight an itch to grab the purse and rummage through it to find out.

  When they reached Willow Street, there was such a crowd on the front stoops that they stopped before reaching Miller’s house.

  “What’s the scoop?” Vladimir asked a boy their age.

  “They found another hollow nickel!”

  “No kidding!” Vladimir whistled long. “With the same old ladies?”

  “Nah,” the kid answered. “At a pharmacy.”

  “Oh, goodness, there’ll be all sorts of goings-on again.” Teresa kept them walking. “Don’t let me forget to tell our hosts. That way they won’t be jumpy if a police officer knocks on the door.”

  “Policemen?” Wow, this was getting good, thought Richard.

  Vladimir laughed. Richard must have looked like he was drooling or something. “Yeah, you’ll love this, Rich. This is 007 stuff. Right before we moved to Washington last summer, a kid who delivered newspapers got a hollow nickel from some customer. He didn’t realize it until it dropped to the floor and split open. And the craziest thing? It had a tiny square of paper in it with a bunch of Lilliputian-size numbers.

  “G-men and cops went all over Brooklyn trying to find out who had given the kid that nickel, like it was the key to some big conspiracy. It ended up just being a pair of ladies who pulled out a handful of coins from a cookie jar to change a dollar for him. That was a dead end, so then the agents went to every five-and-dime store around to see if they sold toy coins that split open like that.”

  “It is sure to be nothing, just some magic-trick novelty item,” said Teresa. “Like hats with hidden compartments for rabbits. Such fuss over nothing.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. Sounds kind of cloak-and-dagge
r to me.”

  Richard nodded. His detective books and spy thrillers were filled with things like hollowed-out shoe heels with tiny radio transmitters or cuff links that hid thumbnail-size coded messages.

  “Man, I wish I didn’t have to go home,” complained Vladimir. “We’re going to miss all the fun!”

  But Richard suddenly couldn’t wait for the train to get moving. He might have a heart attack holding onto all this info for the four hours it would take them to get to Union Station! He was bursting to describe everything he’d seen and heard to his dad. Maybe Richard had discovered things that would turn into the case Abigail believed would set things right for Don.

  “DON! Over here!” Abigail waved to Richard’s dad as he stood in the door of the holding room of WTOP’s brand-new broadcast house. Don took off his fedora and clambered through two dozen other parents, all there to watch their children appear on the Pick Temple’s Giant Ranch show.

  “Excuse me. So sorry. Thanks.” He wedged himself between Abigail and a rather round lady awash in gardenia perfume and a billowing lime-colored skirt. Her stiff white petticoat ballooned her skirt out even farther.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Don drawled and nodded at the woman, who had moved aside an inch, maybe, to make room for him. “That’s right neighborly of you, as our singing cowboy friend Pick might say.”

  The lady was not charmed. With obvious irritation at being crowded, she tried to smooth down her skirt to just one yard diameter of pouf.

  Don turned to Abigail and grinned in an oops, gosh, teacher-doesn’t-like-me way. “I was afraid I’d miss the beginning. Where’s the sugarplum?”

  Abigail pointed. “There, dead center. Doesn’t she look cute?”

  Don squinted at the line of televisions in front of the parents containing a grainy, black-and-white picture of thirty excited children. They were all corralled behind bales of hay and in front of a big sign with the show’s name written in lasso-looking letters. “Where?” he asked.