Suspect Red

by L. M. Elliott

  Of course, it hadn’t helped when Abigail made a big-time fuss over his remembering to be polite to his dad’s boss. And then to get to Hoover’s door, they waded through a dozen armed FBI agents guarding the lawn—as if an invading army was on its way.

  “Wow, everyone’s out in force,” said Don. “It’s possible today’s shooting might be a coordinated attack. Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate Truman a couple years back. Evidently that woman from today—Lolita Lebrón—had been in contact with Truman’s would-be assassin in prison. We’re also wondering if these four jokers are just Communist dupes. Puerto Rico certainly doesn’t benefit from this kind of craziness.

  “So, until we know the whole story, agents brought Vice President Nixon and his family here. We can protect them both better in one place. Besides, they’re big buddies, Nixon and Hoover. They talk on the phone every morning.”

  The door opened and an agent ushered them into the living room. It was all neatly arranged, with carefully pressed cream slipcovers on the armchairs and sofa, the floors brightly polished and covered with boldly geometric Oriental rugs. Richard tried not to gape at the endless gallery of photographs of Hoover with famous people that covered the walls almost ceiling to floor.

  Don noticed his gaze and murmured, “The director keeps a diagram of what picture goes where so we can put them back up in the right spot after we’ve painted rooms for him.”

  “You’ve painted his house for him?” Richard whispered.

  Don grimaced. “Yeaaah.” He drew the word out like a sigh. He obviously regretted having let that slip.

  There was a lot of hubbub and laughter in the next room. Then in lumbered Hoover.

  He was a thick, stolid, brooding man. Richard felt himself recoil inside, even though Hoover smiled at him in what most people would describe as a friendly manner. In bad weather, Hoover often had his driver stop to pick up children shivering at their neighborhood bus stop and dropped them off at school on his way into the bureau’s offices. Richard himself had ridden to school that way a couple of times. So Hoover obviously had some kindness in him. And yet, something about the man made Richard want to take a giant step backward.

  “So, Richard, I hear you were at the House shooting today.” Hoover did not ask him and his father to sit. The director was a formal man, and somehow standing in the living room felt more man-to-man anyway. Don stood at semiattention, so Richard squared his shoulders and planted his feet slightly apart, like his dad always did in that you-can’t-knock-me-over kind of stance.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered.

  “Can you describe what happened?”

  Richard recited the events of the afternoon, trying not to be distracted by the stuffed buck’s head above Hoover, or the very anatomically correct ebony statue of a naked man to the director’s right.

  “Tell me what the shooters looked like.”

  He did, including details that proved he’d seen them firsthand. Hoover nodded, analyzing him as he spoke.

  “Excellent observations, Richard. Your dad said you had a keen eye. When you get a little older, I hope to see you apply to the bureau.”

  Richard flushed hot with pride. He knew Hoover was a tough man to impress, so this praise was thrilling.

  Hoover leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece, friendlier. “Now, think, Richard. Did you see any other wetbacks in the gallery?”

  Richard frowned. His parents never used that derogatory word, although a lot of politicians and jerks at school did. “No, sir. I didn’t notice any other Puerto Ricans.”

  Hoover studied Richard a moment before asking, “Any Negroes?”

  “No, sir.” Why did Hoover ask that?

  “You sure?”

  Richard frowned again. “Yes, sir.”

  Hoover eyed him. “Positive?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Remind me why you were there and who you were with.”

  “I went with my friend Vladimir White. He’s thinking of applying for the congressional page program. He wanted to watch a session, so he could write a better essay for the application. But he was looking down onto the floor of the House when it happened, sir. He wouldn’t have noticed anything in the gallery.”

  “I see.” Hoover glanced at Don. They seemed to nod at each other.

  “All right, boy. Go into the kitchen and have some cake. The cook just made one fresh.” He turned to Don. “I’d like a word with you.”

  Boy? Richard was pretty crestfallen at being dismissed from the conversation so abruptly and suddenly reduced once again to being a kid. But he found his way to the kitchen, through all Hoover’s pictures, glancing over his shoulder to watch Hoover talking with his dad.

  On their way home, Richard couldn’t keep from asking, “What did Mr. Hoover want to talk to you about, Dad?”

  “A case.”

  “Are you going to be working on the shooting?”

  “No, it’s one I started on a while back.”

  In the light spilling from the houses onto the street as they passed, Richard could see that Don was smiling. That was rare after an encounter with his boss. So Richard dared to ask in a low voice, “Dad, does it have to do with that money I saw Mr. Hoover give you back in July? At Harvey’s?”

  Don stopped short. “What?” His voice was sharp. “How do you know about that?”

  “I—I—I saw him give it to you.” Richard was kicking himself for bringing it up.

  “Damn,” Don muttered.

  “Was it…Is it…Were you doing undercover stuff?”

  “What? No. Don’t ever ask me about that damn wad of money again, Richard, you understand?” His voice was a verbal slap. There it was—that “psycho” stuff again. Don took off walking in big, fast strides.

  Richard had to jog to keep up.

  Then his dad stopped dead once more. Richard nearly crashed into him from behind. Don rubbed his jaw for a moment, thinking. Richard could hear the scratch of evening beard stubble against his dad’s hand. Then he clasped his hands together for a good long moment. Steadying them, Richard figured.

  Finally, Don spoke with careful fatherly control. “Do me a favor, Rich. Forget what you saw in July. That’s over with. Things are looking up for me now.” He put his arm over Richard’s shoulder. “Thanks to you.” He started them forward, their steps now in sync. “Let’s go tell your beautiful mom that everything is A-OK.”

  Richard was no dummy. He could put pieces together. If his dad’s case wasn’t about the shooting, and he had it thanks to Richard, then it had to be about Teresa and the mystery man in New York City. That probably meant Richard had been right about those guys in raincoats that he’d spotted coming away from Vladimir’s house the night of the Pick Temple show. They’d probably been FBI agents on a bag job, maybe even bugging Vladimir’s home. His best friend. A kid who now thought of Richard as a war buddy. As a brother.

  Richard looked up at Don’s face. For once it seemed proud, clear of conflict. Could Abigail be right that a good case could be the cure for all Don’s ills? His shakes, his regrets, his guilt, his mistakes? And for Richard’s? Here they were walking together, in one step, man-to-man. It was what Richard had been longing for with his dad. And yet, that arm across his shoulder felt very heavy.

  “GOOOOOOD morning.”

  Richard turned in his chair, recognizing Natalia’s oddly insolent yet charming voice. He and Dottie were at Vladimir’s house prepping for a debate competition. Vladimir had formed a debate team at the high school and recruited them. The Whites’ kitchen table was covered with encyclopedias and newspaper articles on Indochina. The debate question had to do with France’s colonial rule and whether the United States should aid the French Vietnamese fight against the Communist rebels. It was pretty obvious Dottie needed all the help she could get to hold her own in a give-and-take that required knowing a lot of facts. Richard was thrilled since it meant she was sitting next to him and actually talking to him!

  “Good afternoon,” Vladimir c
ountered his sister, who stumbled sleepy-eyed into the kitchen.

  “Is it?” Natalia laughed. “Oh well! They may call them sleeper trains, but no one can really sleep on those things for three whole days and nights. I can’t wait for the airlines to make their new transcontinental flights affordable for us peons. Supposedly they are starting an economy class—just no champagne for us!” She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “What a bunch of fascists! Anyway, this is normal for college. No one gets up before noon on Saturday.”

  “It’s Thursday!”

  “Yes, but I am on my spring break. Even if I am here to help Mother paint all her kraslice. Every day will be Saturday for me for the next two weeks!”

  Natalia stretched dramatically. She wore a UCLA T-shirt and sweatpants, and her dark, short-cropped curls stood up in pillow-squished tufts. Dottie, in her perfectly crisp blouse and skirt, looked her up and down with disapproval.

  But even without makeup and with uncombed hair, there was something California-glamorous about Natalia. “Please tell me there is coffee,” she said.

  “Nope.” Vladimir grinned. “But I bet Mom would fix you some. MOM!” he bellowed.

  “Shhhhhhhh! You’ll wake Maurice! Besides, I know how to make coffee now. Instant, anyway.” She put on the teakettle and pulled a jar of Nescafé from a cabinet. She turned and looked at Vladimir. “You haven’t seen him up yet?”

  “Nope. Mom commandeered the couch in the living room for him and gave me strict instructions this morning not to disturb the guy. So we’ve been tiptoeing around. Sorry I couldn’t stay up to meet him last night. But you know Mom’s midnight-curfew rule.”

  Natalia nodded, stretched again, and then plopped down into a chair next to Richard. “Oh, look.” She smiled at him. “It’s the closet subversive.”

  Richard’s face flamed red. “Wh-what?”

  She turned to Vladimir, pointing her thumb at Richard as she said, “I have high hopes for this one. He isn’t afraid to read.”

  “Read what?” Dottie finally spoke up.

  Natalia eyed Dottie. “Read what? Books!” Natalia answered emphatically. “And what book is on your bedside table at the moment?”

  “Oh my gosh, it’s The Clue of the Velvet Mask. It’s fantastic! Nancy goes to a masquerade ball, where really important works of art are stolen. I’ve just gotten to the part where a pair of thieves wrap her up in bedcovers and try to suffocate her. But she gets away!”

  “Nancy Drew?”

  “Yes, do you read the series, too?

  Natalia forced a smile. “I used to when I was, like…” Vladimir cleared his throat loudly. Natalia paused and forced a smile. “I used to.” She looked over at her brother with a raised eyebrow that screamed, Really?

  Now it was Vladimir’s turn to redden. But before his sister could say anything else, Vladimir hastened to make introductions: “Dottie, this is my sister, Natalia. Natalia, this is my friend, Dottie.”

  “This is Dottie?” Natalia repeated the name with a tone of voice that made clear she knew all about their puppy love romance.

  Richard was aware that Vladimir and Natalia wrote each other weekly—a sibling friendship that amazed him. Clearly Vladimir had bared his heart to his big sister. Richard wondered fleetingly if Ginny would ever write him at college one day to ask his advice on her first crush. They had been that close once. But age seemed such a rubber band—right now the four-year difference between them was pulled out taut, almost to the snapping point. Maybe once Ginny was a teenager, she’d stop annoying him so much. Or—Richard had a sudden and uncomfortable self-revelation—maybe when he was in college and less of a teenager, he’d be less annoyed by everything.

  He squirmed a bit in his chair and was glad that Natalia’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “How very nice to finally meet you,” she was saying to her brother’s girlfriend.

  Dottie giggled.

  “So, how is Mother taking all this?” Natalia continued, her voice mischievous. “Her baby having a love interest?”

  Dottie twisted a tendril of her strawberry blond hair. She might as well have been twirling Richard’s sad heart as well.

  “Your mother is taking it just fine.” Teresa entered the kitchen. She wrapped her arms around Natalia’s shoulders and kissed her head. “Leave your brother be.” She straightened up and gently stroked her daughter’s hair into place. “Eggs?” Teresa moved toward the stove.

  Natalia groaned. “Can’t I just drink some coffee before we start working on your Easter eggs, Mother? Good grief.”

  Richard tensed, expecting Teresa to reprimand her daughter’s back talk. But she merely smiled. “Eggs to eat, miláčku. We will paint later. Scrambled?”

  “I don’t really eat breakfast at college, Mother.”

  “But now you are home.”

  As Teresa cracked eggs and whisked them, Natalia turned back to Richard. “I’ve been meaning to include some news for you in my letters to Vladi. You’re going to love this. College students have finally had enough of McCarthy’s witch hunt. We are starting to rise up! And you can thank Robin Hood for it!”

  “What?” Richard asked with some confusion.

  Teresa handed Natalia a cup of coffee. She swallowed half of it before starting to talk again. Like she needed the caffeine fortification to give a speech.

  “Last month, Indiana University started a movement against that idiot librarian who wanted to ban Robin Hood. Five students went to a chicken farm and stuffed burlap sacks with every feather they could find. Then they dyed them green. Like Robin Hood’s green cap and feather. So poetic, right? They spread them all over campus to protest censorship. It was incredibly gutsy—I mean, this is Indiana! The university still requires its male students to do ROTC. Fascists.”

  She finished her coffee and held up the cup for more. “The local press totally tore them apart. Now the word is, the FBI is all over those students.”

  Again, Richard squirmed in his seat.

  Teresa filled Natalia’s cup, smiling at her with obvious pride. At that moment, Natalia reminded Richard a lot of Teresa—actually, of Teresa’s speech about art the night of the Whites’ Christmas party.

  Natalia sipped and started talking again, with growing fervor. “But their message is spreading anyway! Harvard is making green feather pins. And a bunch of us are organizing a march at UCLA. We’re going to dress up like the Merry Men! It’ll make a great visual. Who in their right minds can think the Merry Men should be censored!”

  She put her cup down and tapped the table impatiently with her pointer finger as she spoke. “Adults may go to the McCarthy slaughterhouse like sheep. But we’re not going to. Even if the fascists in the Senate vote down giving us eighteen-year-olds the vote! Student activism like the Green Feather Movement is going to blow away McCarthyism. We’ll break open the floodgates of free speech. We’ll wash away all this oppression. You wait and see!”

  Vladimir started clapping. “You kill me, sis. You’re becoming a regular Emma Goldman.”

  She grinned.

  “Oh dear, not like that poor woman,” Teresa said as she handed Natalia her breakfast. “We don’t want you deported, miláčku!”

  “Hoover was able to deport Emma Goldman, Mother, because she had been born in Russia and was a true anarchist.” Natalia rolled her eyes. “I’m simply a U.S. citizen arguing for my First Amendment rights.”

  “Ahhh. Like the Hollywood Ten? How long were they in prison?”

  Vladimir laughed. “Mom’s right, sis. You radical! If the FBI had bugged our house, you might be on your way to the hoosegow, right now! Hey, Rich, this is like an episode of I Led 3 Lives, don’t you think?”

  Richard’s heart started beating wildly. If their house was bugged. His pulse kicked into a violent throbbing as his mind repeated it. If their house was bugged!

  He could tell Vladimir was saying something to him, but his heartbeat was knocking in his ears so loudly he could barely make it out.

  “Right, Rich?”
r />   “Wh-wh-what?”

  “You read all those detective stories. And your dad’s a G-man.” Vladimir punched Richard’s shoulder. “That was exactly the kind of speech that might set the FBI scurrying to set up surveillance on my feather-toting, left-wing sister. Look at her. She’s gotta be dangerous! She could take down our government with Robin Hood green feathers!”

  Natalia made a goofy face at him.

  “But you could help me break Natalia out of jail if she gets caught. You know all that clandestine spy stuff. How’d we do it?”

  “I—I—I…” Richard’s face felt hot and sweaty.

  “Goodness, my dear. You look ill.” Teresa put her hand on his forehead. “Are you all right, Richard?”

  It was Dottie who unknowingly saved him.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. White? Are you going to dye Easter eggs? I just love making them. I can give an egg four different colors the way I dip and hold them in the bowls. Mom says I’m very clever that way. Can I help? The Easter bunny is my favorite holiday character. Does anybody read Beatrix Potter? Or The Velveteen Rabbit?”

  Everyone in the kitchen stared at Dottie. Even Vladimir seemed to shake his head at the non sequitur. But Richard wanted to kiss her—her questions gave Richard a chance to recover himself a little.

  “It isn’t just dyeing eggs,” Natalia answered sharply, barely disguising her disdain. “We paint them with flowers and geometric figures. Mother makes and sells dozens to raise money for Czech refugees who fled the communist coup. Have you never seen Russian Easter eggs? They are works of art.”

  “Oh, yes, I have. Oh, goody.” Dottie clasped her hands and bounced a little in her seat. “Can I try making some? Please?”

  Natalia glanced over at Dottie with a profound are-you-kidding-me expression.

  But Teresa caught Vladimir’s pleading look. “Of course, Dottie. I will show you. We can make some right now. That is, of course, if Richard feels up to it.” Her hand was still on his forehead, and she leaned over a little to look into Richard’s eyes. “You feel cool now. Are you better?”