by Avi
I decided to go on June 5, the day before the anniversary of D-Day, the huge invasion of France during World War Two. If Dad could be there and survive, I could visit the FBI office and survive. Then, the following day, I’d go to that movie with Dad and tell him how I saved him.
I rehearsed what I’d say.
Tuesday, right after school, I ran home, dumped my books, gulped down a glass of Ovaltine, and walked to downtown Brooklyn and the Borough Hall building.
It was in the heart of Brooklyn, but Borough Hall was as grand and solemn as an ancient Greek temple. It had wide stone steps, at the top of which stood six huge stone columns. Ordinary people—none of them in togas—drifted in and out. In the entrance hall, a guard with a pistol on his hip sat behind a tall desk. He was probably on the lookout for Giants fans.
“Sir,” I asked, “can you tell me where I can find the FBI office?”
“What do you want with them, kid?”
I handed him Mr. Ewing’s card. “I need to talk to him.”
He studied the card. “Something for school?” he asked.
“Sort of,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
Pointing with the card, the guard said, “Go down those steps. You’ll be in a corridor. Walk toward the end and look for a glass door with ‘Federal Bureau of Investigation’ on it.” He handed the card back to me.
“Thanks.”
The hallway was long and deserted, the floor covered with a pattern of small white tiles, like you usually saw in bathrooms. Triple glass light globes hung from the ceiling. Most of the doors had windows of frosted glass, the kind you couldn’t see through, with old-fashioned gold lettering:
Office of Parks Management
Department of Waste Licenses
Toward the middle of the hall, I found the door that had
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Brooklyn Office
I stood for a few moments, letting my heart go normal, while I rehearsed what I planned to say. It didn’t help that from inside came the sound of fast typing, like a drum rattle. It reminded me of a movie I’d seen. When someone was about to be hanged, they beat a drum that sounded like that.
I pulled the door open.
Pete stepped into a small, well-lit room where a good-looking blonde sat behind a wide desk. On the desk were neat piles of papers, almost as neat as the dame was, along with a typewriter and a phone. Next to the phone was a small American flag on a pedestal, too small for anyone to count the forty-eight stars. A coat tree stood in one corner. The wall behind the blonde had three closed doors and no windows. It didn’t seem like the best spot to start searching for secrets, but even dull rooms can hold tons of dynamite. Like the blonde.
The woman who had been typing looked up and gave me a smile that suggested she might do better selling toothpaste.
“Hello. May I help you?”
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Ewing.”
“Is he expecting you?”
“He said I could come by if I wanted.” When I held out his card I hoped she didn’t notice my hand was shaking. She took the card, glanced at it, then me, and said, “Will you tell me your name?”
“Pete Collison.”
“Please have a seat, Mr. Collison. I’ll see if Mr. Ewing is free.”
She went through one of the back doors, her high heels making no sound on the drab office carpet. The door was also noiseless. Pete sat there, thinking about how strange it was to be called “Mr. Collison.”
I looked around. There were two pictures on the sky blue wall: One was President Truman. The other face was a man who looked like a bulldog. I didn’t know who he was. Up against another wall were a couple of stiff chairs.
There was also a row of wooden file cabinets. If I had X-ray vision, I would have searched the bulging file labeled “Collison.”
The secretary reappeared. With her was a smiling Mr. Ewing, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up. Around his neck hung a loosened gray tie.
“Pete,” he called as if we were old friends. “Great to see you.” He held out his hand. We shook. It didn’t hurt, the way it did the last time.
“Come on back to my office,” Ewing said. “Miss Tolin, I don’t wish to be disturbed.”
“Yes, Mr. Ewing.” She said it so nicely I decided she was his girlfriend.
With a touch to my back, Ewing guided me into a pale blue office. There was a wooden desk with a big green blotter, a chair behind it, plus a couple of chairs in front. A folded Daily News lay off to one side. Some papers were on the desk. No ashtray. Against one wall were more file cabinets.
“Sit yourself down,” Ewing said. He gestured to a chair, then sat behind his desk.
I kept forward on my seat. From the front office, the drumbeat of typing resumed. Every few seconds there was a ding! announcing that the secretary had reached the end of a line. I felt as though I had, too.
Still smiling, Ewing leaned forward and clasped his hands. “Nice to see you,” he said.
I sat there, unable to get out the words I’d practiced. The rattle of the typewriter rattled me.
“Something important?” he coaxed.
I blurted, “I want you to stop following me.”
Though his smile stayed fixed, he unclasped his hands, sat straight. His blue eyes, like headlights, were steady. “What makes you think I’m following you?”
I said, “Black Ford. New York license plate PED459. You followed me from my father’s college the other day.”
His eyes stayed fixed on me.
“And,” I added, bolder now that I had started, “I know you’ve bugged Mr. Ordson’s apartment to hear our conversations.”
He didn’t move.
“You went to Mr. Depaco’s house. Asked him about me.”
That time his jaw seemed to tighten.
“I think I know why you’re doing it, too.”
“Always interested in a good yarn,” Ewing said. All business now, he rolled down his sleeves and buttoned them. Adjusted his tie.
“Some informer told you that my father was a Communist when Dad was nineteen. You think my father has more secrets but he won’t talk to you. So you’re intimidating me to intimidate him.”
Mr. Ewing studied me for such a long, silent time that I couldn’t keep my eyes up.
“Sounds like you’re auditioning for a job with the agency. We could use a good man like you. Bet you listen to that radio show, This Is Your FBI.”
“Like The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective better.”
“Written by a Commie.”
“Hammett doesn’t even write the shows.” When he didn’t react, I said, “I just want you to leave my dad alone.”
He said, “Pete, my job is to protect the United States of America from its enemies, both domestic and foreign. People who wish to destroy our society and our democratic way of life.”
“My dad doesn’t want to hurt America.”
“Glad to hear it. But there are those who are attempting to do just that, primarily godless Communists.”
“I’m not a Communist. I don’t like Communists. My dad doesn’t either. He’s a socialist.”
“No difference.”
“Is!”
“Pete, we believe your father has information that would help us do our job.”
“That what the informer told you?”
When he said nothing, I considered telling him I knew the informer was Bobby, but I held back, waiting to make my deal. “If you leave my dad alone . . . I won’t reveal the name of your informer.”
He actually seemed to consider it. “Look, Pete, if your dad is a good, patriotic American—as you claim—who has broken no laws, he has absolutely nothing to worry about. Neither do you.”
I said, “Then stop following me.”
He was quiet for a while. “You have a reputation for knowing family secrets.”
“My brother tell you that?”
“You’re a lot closer to your dad than he is.”
&
nbsp; “How do you know?”
The smile returned, tighter this time. “It’s my job to know things.”
“I bet you told—Mr. Donavan—that my dad was a Communist. Want to know what happened after that? Donavan made everyone in my class hate me. They called me ‘Commie.’ Won’t talk to me. Won’t even let me play punchball. My best friend was sent away.”
Ewing snorted. “We’re fighting a war against Reds and you can’t play punchball, huh? The Commies might drop an A-bomb on us but your best friend went away. Poor Pete.”
“Leave me alone!” I shouted. The typing in the other room stopped. Was Miss Tolin listening to the conversation?
Ewing continued to gaze at me. Then he stood, went to one of the file cabinets, and opened it. His fingers ran along the tabs. He pulled out a file, sat down, and opened it. “Your grandfather, Thomas Collison,” he said, reading, “went to the Soviet Union in 1934 under a contract with the Amtorg Trading Corporation. Worked at the Ford factory the Soviets rebuilt.”
So Dad’s father did go to Russia.
Ewing, still looking at the file, went on. “Like most Americans who went to Soviet Russia, your grandfather was probably arrested and sent to a Siberian labor camp, where he worked like a slave, died, or was forced into the Red Army.”
In my head I said, He doesn’t know my grandfather is alive.
Ewing closed the folder and flipped it to one side. “Let me tell you, Pete, if we let the Commies take over, that’s exactly how people will be treated here.”
And he doesn’t know my grandfather has come back to America.
“He just wanted to find work,” I mumbled.
Ewing clasped his hands. “Maybe.” Then he said, “The name Nelson Kasper mean anything to you?”
I shook my head.
“Listen, Pete,” said Ewing. “I like you. You’re a good kid. Smart. It took guts to come here. If you really want to help your father, tell him to cooperate with the U.S. government.”
“How?”
“By helping us find your grandfather.”
“He just wanted work,” I said again.
Ewing said, “Maybe your grandfather wasn’t killed. Maybe he became a Commie spy.”
I had never thought of that. It shook me. It took me a moment to recover. “What . . . what if my dad doesn’t help you?”
“Not good. But if you can tell us things, I promise we won’t trouble him. Maybe he can hang on to his job.”
“Tell you what?” I whispered.
“Things about your father. Your grandfather. Did you know your father was a Communist before I told you? Did you know your grandfather went to the Soviet Union?”
I shook my head.
“Listen, Pete, my job is to see what’s going on in our country. I intend to do exactly that.”
“Did you bug Mr. Ordson’s apartment?”
Ewing said, “You could tell us what your dad talks about—when he talks politics. Does he have friends who are Commies? And who does he visit at the Duffy Nursing Home?”
“You’re asking me to spy on my dad.”
He leaned forward. Without the trace of a smile on his face, he said, “Hey, Pete, isn’t that exactly what you’ve been doing?”
If he had thrown a brick at my head, it couldn’t have hurt more.
He must have guessed my reaction. He said, “I think we’d work well together. Still rooting for the Giants?”
“Yeah.”
He reached for his newspaper and turned over a few pages. “Says here the Giants are in fifth place behind the Dodgers. Twelve games out of first place. Want some advice, Pete?”
“I guess.”
“Pick winners.” He tossed the paper aside. “Your brother has.”
His words jolted me back to life. “What’s that mean?”
“Bobby wants to go to the moon, right? Only one way he can get there. The U.S. government. Maybe I offered a recommendation for something he wanted to do in return for a little help.”
I jumped up. Far as I was concerned, Ewing just confirmed that Bobby was the informer. I said, “I’m going to tell my family who the informer is.”
For once, I landed a punch. He sat back. “Pete, it would be a serious mistake to interfere with what we do.”
“I’m telling!” I shouted, and bolted from the room. I wasn’t so much leaving as escaping.
Behind me, I heard Ewing shout: “Don’t be a loser, Pete.”
I ran out of the building and didn’t slow down until I was on the street. The farther I walked, the more I began to think about what I had just learned, facts as sharp as needles.
First: Ewing told me Dad’s father had gone to the Soviet Union.
Second: He didn’t know he had come back and that he was in the nursing home.
Third: Maybe my grandfather was a Soviet spy.
Fourth: Ewing all but admitted Bobby was the informer.
But . . . maybe Bobby was doing a good thing by being an informer. Protecting the U.S. from spies. Turning Dad in, the way Sam Spade turned in the woman he loved.
Then I realized something: Ewing had asked me if I knew a Nelson Kasper. It was one of the names on the photo Dad had.
Who was he?
I was supposed to go with Dad to see that Sam Spade movie tomorrow. We’d be alone and out of the house. It was time to tell him everything I had discovered. Get answers. Time to throw my dynamite stick of truth.
33
Next day, I spent all of school—four hundred and fifty minutes—watching the hands on the classroom clock. They moved as if someone had stuck bubble gum into the works. We also had a bomb drill. I told myself it was good practice for the explosion I was going to drop on Dad.
As the day wore on, I felt my insides being wound tighter and tighter. Was I really going to tell Dad about Bobby and what I had found about his dad? Or that the FBI thought my grandfather was a spy?
Yes.
After school, I made my way to Dad’s college office. It was stuffed with American history books. On the walls were pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Between them was a realistic copy of the Declaration of Independence. When I walked in, Dad was sitting behind his messy desk, reading.
Soon as I appeared, he put his book down, and flipped an orange and black New York Giants sweatshirt at me. “Like it?” he said, grinning.
“Yeah. Nice.”
“Too bad they aren’t doing well. Brooklyn is first. Where are the Giants?”
As I pulled the sweatshirt over my head, I said, “Fourth.”
“Oh, well. Wait till next year.”
I remembered my bet with Kat.
“You’re going to love this movie, Pete,” he said as we walked toward the college theater. “It won two Academy Awards and is on lots of ‘Best Ever’ movie lists. Humphrey Bogart is great as Sam Spade.”
The theater was half full, mostly with students. A few waved to Dad as we found seats. A girl rushed up and said to him, “Professor Collison, is this your son?”
“Sure is.”
“He looks like you. Your father is the chili,” she said to me and ran off.
“What’s ‘chili’ mean?”
He laughed. “I think she means I’m okay.”
What would they think when they learned he was hiding a Soviet spy?
I had read The Maltese Falcon a bunch of times, so I knew the story: a gang was after an ancient jeweled bird. Everybody lies, cheats, double-crosses, and kills one another to get it. You’re not supposed to know who’s good or bad—except for Sam Spade, of course. Turns out the worst crook is the lady he loves. But he turns her over to the police the way I imagined myself turning in Bobby.
Right then I knew I could never do it.
After we walked to the restaurant, I said, “The part I never get is Spade really loved that woman, right?”
“Right. Brigid O’Shaughnessy.”
“But he handed her over to the cops.”
“Because she killed his partner. He h
as to be loyal to what he believes.”
“You think he did right?” I asked.
He said, “Pal, if you ever look up the word right in a dictionary, you’ll find it’s one of the oldest words in the English language. Even so, people have never stopped arguing about what it means. I suspect they always will.”
The restaurant was called Little Italy. Inside, a dozen people sat at round tables covered with red-and-white checkered tablecloths. On each table were a glass ashtray and an empty wine bottle wrapped in straw. A lit candle stuck out the top, dripping red wax. From somewhere unseen, accordion music oozed like sweet syrup. Cigarette smoke layered the air like a zebra’s ghost.
Dad pointed to the glossy pictures on the wall. “The Leaning Tower of Pisa. The Roman Colosseum. Saint Peter’s. All in Italy. Someday we should go.”
A waitress came over. My father ordered. “A couple of Cokes and a pizza with everything.”
“What’s . . . pizza?” I asked.
“It’s the new hit. You’ll love it.” Dad was having a good time. His face was so relaxed I hated to ruin it. But I decided this was the best time to talk.
I hunched over the table. “Dad, got some huge things to tell you.”
“Shoot.”
I took a deep breath and said, “I went to the FBI office.”
Dad’s mouth fell open. “You did what?” His voice was a choked whisper.
I said, “I spoke to that FBI agent, Mr. Ewing. The one who came to our house.”
He stared at me with disbelieving eyes. “Why?” he said. The word came at me like a sharp arrow.
“For you,” I said.
“Is this a joke?”
“No. I . . . I really went.”
Dad patted his pocket, looking for cigarettes. Not finding any, he leaned forward. All the fun had fled from his face. Anger replaced it. In a hard voice he said, “Talk. But keep it down.”
Struggling to speak, I said, “I wanted . . . the FBI to leave you—and me—alone. Stop, you know, trying to intimidate me. I . . . I told Ewing if he stopped I wouldn’t tell anyone who the informer is.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”