The House of Special Purpose

by Paul Christopher

  One last detail, even though he didn’t really think the question of fingerprints would ever become important. He wiped down his own glass, left Harte’s where it was and then carried the bourbon across to Pelham’s chair. He wrapped the man’s hand around the heavy crystal then let it drop. The half-filled glass dropped to the floor, the booze and ice cubes spilling out onto the Chinese art deco carpet. Zarubin took a last look around. Nothing seemed out of place. If things went according to plan, he would have the film within the next day or two and be on his way back to Washington.

  The winner, as he always knew he’d be.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Monday, December 1, 1941

  Kansas City, Missouri

  Jane Todd and Morris Black arrived in Kansas City at two thirty-five a.m and got off the Super Chief without incident. There were no local police or FBI agents waiting to arrest them as they left the train and no sign at all that the two dead men had been found stuffed into the toilet cubicle of their bedroom. If they were lucky, the bodies wouldn’t be discovered until late morning or even early afternoon. By then the barman and the steward serving in the lounge car might remember the two passengers who’d stayed up all the way to Kansas City but by then it would be too late.

  They made their way through the high-ceilinged domed concourse of Union Station, stepped out into the chilly early morning darkness and managed to find a cab. They asked their sleepy driver for a good hotel and he took them to the Continental on Baltimore Street. Both the cocktail lounges were closed but the coffee shop was still open. They ordered an early breakfast and after asking the waitress Jane managed to find a brochure for Transcontinental and Western Airways on a rack by one of the lounge cloakrooms. According to the TWA schedule there was an early morning flight leaving the recently improved Municipal Airport at six a.m, scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles ten hours later at just after two in the afternoon West Coast time. With time on their hands they ate slowly, then ordered more coffee and lit cigarettes. Any thoughts of romance had vanished, at least for the moment.

  ‘Bodies are starting to pile up, Morris.’ Jane shook her head wearily. ‘Maddox, Cesar Durantes, the two Mexican cops, two more guys on the train, not to mention the attempt to kill us at Trotsky’s villa.’

  ‘I still think that was a ruse,’ Black answered. He took a sip of his coffee and scowled. ‘Too hot,’ he muttered. He dragged on his cigarette, inhaling deeply, then letting the smoke drift slowly out through his nostrils. He tapped the cigarette nervously on the edge of the little tin ashtray in the centre of the table. ‘None of it fits,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘Fits?’

  ‘A crime is a series of facts. A fight between a husband and a wife. The wife goes to the kitchen, fetches a butcher knife and sneaks up behind her husband while he’s listening to the radio. She stabs him in the back and he falls forward, dead as mutton, the tea spilling all over his lap. She goes upstairs to the bathroom, draws herself a hot bath, climbs into it and slashes her wrist from remorse. Any copper coming onto a scene like that could read the facts like a book. Neighbours heard the fight, there’s a knife missing from the set in the kitchen, the radio’s still on and there’s a tea stain on the dead man’s lap and on the carpet and the wife is upstairs in the tub with the water all gone nasty and the knife on the floor where she dropped it. All facts that can be matched to evidence.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘We don’t have facts. We have suppositions, theories, directions to investigate, but none of it adds up.’

  ‘Maddox thought he was going to be found out so he ran. His masters decided it was too risky to let him live.’

  ‘A theory. All we know for a fact is that Maddox ran when we showed up and that they fished him out of the Bay of Fundy or whatever you call it a day or so later.’

  ‘He was Harte’s lover.’

  ‘Once again no facts. We have no evidence. We also don’t have Harte. Why wasn’t he in the grave? Presumably because he’s still alive. But if he’s left alive, why did they kill Maddox?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jane, ‘at least we know why Cesar died. Wrong place, wrong time.’

  ‘I doubt that’s the reason.’ Black sipped the coffee then took a longer swallow.

  ‘You think he was killed on purpose?’ said Jane. ‘Why the hell would anyone want to kill an innocent kid like that?’

  ‘Because somebody connected directly to us had to die. The two Mexican policemen inside the compound weren’t enough. Eventually it would have come out that they were dead long before we arrived in Mexico, let alone at the murder scene.’

  ‘That still doesn’t explain Cesar’s death.’

  ‘According to Fleming this Guadalupe Gomez woman is a crack rifle shot. Cesar was struck square in the chest at a relatively high angle and through the glass of the motor car’s windscreen. A difficult shot but easily made by someone like her, but she misses you and me completely. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘She murdered him just for the sake of doing it?’

  ‘She murdered him because a murder was necessary. Think about it. We heard police sirens within a few seconds of the first shots being fired. That means the police were called or somehow knew about the situation before the incident began. It was meant to slow us down, take us out of the picture.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘The same people who killed Maddox. Most likely at the order of this Zarubin fellow, the NKVD agent.’

  ‘And the two men on the train?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Black. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. You seem to think they weren’t Russians.’

  ‘Not dressed in Brooks Brothers and besides their teeth were too good.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Brooks Brothers and good dental work don’t add up to people from Eastern Europe and they were both wearing rings on the third finger of their right hands.’

  ‘I didn’t notice either one of them wearing a ring,’ said Black.

  ‘They weren’t.’ Jane grinned. ‘But they had been. You could see the marks and the short guy had some. You could see the white spot on his finger. Whoever took their wallets took their rings.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the rings identified them somehow. West Point gives rings to its graduates, so do the Naval Academy at Annapolis and some of the major universities. They do that at the University of Moscow or whatever the Reds call it?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘There you go.’

  ‘But hardly fact.’ Black smiled. ‘Just one more theory to add to the rest.’

  ‘The real question isn’t who they are anyway,’ said Jane. She lit another cigarette off the butt end of her previous one. ‘The real question is how they knew we were on that train. Nobody knew about that. Not even Fleming. He was expecting us to meet with Donovan the following day, then fly out to Los Angeles that evening.’

  ‘It has to be the Russians again,’ said Black. ‘It can’t be anyone else.’

  ‘But that’s the whole point,’ Jane responded. ‘If the two guys on the train aren’t this Zarubin guy’s people, then it can’t be Zarubin who followed us.’

  ‘Which brings us back to Donovan.’

  ‘I’ve thought about that too,’ said Jane. ‘Maybe he kept a permanent watch on us, independent of your friend Fleming.’

  ‘Fairly Machiavellian, don’t you think?’

  ‘Machiavellian times. And anyway, who else could it be?’

  ‘Hoover.’

  ‘That’s what you said on the train.’

  ‘It makes a certain amount of sense. Hoover doesn’t like Stephenson or his British Security Coordination mob very much and there’s no love lost between him and Donovan either.’

  ‘Which leads us to another problem,’ said Jane.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘If they were Hoover’s boys, and they were snooping through our things looking for some clue about what we were up to, then who came along out o
f the blue and killed them?’

  * * *

  The man drove the dark blue Mercury Town Sedan up Connecticut Avenue in the gathering dawn, heading for Chevy Chase. Normally he would have been driving one of the Bureau cars but this visit to the director was a particularly sensitive one so he was driving his own car instead. He was dressed in a plain dark suit, a white shirt and a plain navy blue tie. The shoes on his feet were black Florsheims and his dark hair was short and neatly combed. He had also taken particular care in showering, shaving closely and trimming his nails, before picking up his passenger at National Airport, well aware of the director’s germ phobia and his very clear-cut attitudes concerning dress and personal hygiene. Edward A. Tamm was officially the assistant director for criminal investigations at the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as being the unofficial head of the newly revived General Intelligence Division. He had joined the FBI eleven years before after graduating from Georgetown University Law School. He was thirty-seven years old.

  The man in the front passenger seat was a dozen years older with a drawn basset-hound face and eyes a shade of grey that matched his three-piece suit. He wore an old but recently blocked snap-brim fedora. His name was J. E. Connelly and he was one of the director’s ‘Specials’ who went back even further than the creation of the Federal Bureau to the time when the director was head of the original General Intelligence Division of the Justice Department, most often known then as the Red Squad. It had been officially disbanded in 1920 after a series of political debacles but the director had revived it, using the war in Europe as his excuse and the Hitler– Stalin Non-aggression Pact as his rationale, painting a picture of a nation rife with plots and spies, both Red and Nazi. Connelly had not spoken a word to Tamm since he’d been picked up at the airport.

  The younger man flicked the signal lever down and swung the wheel of the big car onto Thirtieth Place.

  ‘Park the car,’ said Connelly. His voice was worn and raw as though he smoked too many cigarettes but Tamm hadn’t seen him light one since they’d left the airport. Obediently he pulled the car over to the curb and parked.

  ‘The director’s house is at the far end of the block.’

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ said Connelly. ‘People have a tendency to note down licence numbers. I don’t want yours being jotted down.’ Connelly climbed out of the car before Tamm could answer. The younger man thought he was overdoing it a little but Connelly was clearly the man in charge and Tamm wouldn’t have it any other way, especially if Connelly was the bearer of bad tidings. The director might not actually shoot the messenger but he was more than capable of exiling the poor bastard to a field office in Omaha. He climbed out of the car, fetched his worn, government-issue briefcase from the backseat and locked the car door. He adjusted the holstered .38 Smith & Wesson on his hip and did up both buttons of his suit jacket. He risked a look in the side mirror, smoothed back his hair at the temples and followed Connelly up the shadowed residential street.

  The house at 4936 Thirtieth Place NW was a two-storey brick on a half-acre lot. It had a mansard roof with slate shingles and a single chimney but the overall style was Colonial Federal. The director had purchased the property shortly after the death of his mother, Alice Hoover.

  The two men turned up the front walk. As Connelly pressed the small lighted buzzer, Tamm noted that, as usual, all the Venetian blinds on the front windows of the house were closed. There was a brief pause and then the front door opened. Annie Fields, the live-in cook and housekeeper, stood in the doorway. She was dressed in a colourful print dress covered by a white apron. She stood aside and the two men entered the house.

  ‘He’s in the study,’ she said.

  Connelly nodded and finally removed his hat. He headed past the coloured woman to the carpeted stairs and headed up, with Tamm following. The area around the bottom landing was cluttered with small tables and antiques, most of them Oriental, while the wall all the way up to the first landing was covered with photographs, including a large autographed one of the president. On the first landing was a gilt-framed oil painting of the director in a stern, almost grim pose, his positioning giving the impression of a much taller man than he really was. There was also a bronze bust of him on a small cherrywood table.

  Along the walls of the upstairs hallway there were literally dozens of drawings, etchings and cartoons, all of them depicting the director, usually with an exaggerated bulldog chin. Interspersed among these were more photographs of Hoover, these showing him with a variety of Hollywood celebrities from Barrymore to W. C. Fields. Notably missing from the pantheon of actors and actresses was Charlie Chaplin, who the director had almost single-handedly had thrown out of the country.

  The door to the director’s study was closed. Connelly knocked quietly and received a one-word response:

  ‘Come.’

  The older man opened the door and entered, followed closely by Tamm. The room was large, two walls papered with more photographs, these of the director playing golf and tennis with notable sports figures going back to the mid-twenties. There was one wall with a large draped window while the fourth, like his fifth-floor office in the Justice Department Building, held a huge map of the United States flagged in red, showing every one of the FBI field offices, headquarters marked with a gold star. Lines of thread connected the field offices to Washington. All roads leading to Rome.

  There were several Persian carpets on the cherry floor, a long leather couch under the map and two leather armchairs in front of a large antique oak desk. Seated behind the desk in a leather armchair of his own was the director, John Edgar Hoover. He gestured towards the two armchairs with a wave of his hand and the men sat down, Tamm holding his briefcase on his lap, Connelly his fedora. The only light in the room came from a simple green gooseneck lamp on the desk, throwing a puddle of light on several file folders covered by Hoover’s small, clasped hands.

  Hoover was scowling, his usual expression and one beloved by political cartoonists for the better part of twenty-five years. ‘Well?’ he said to Connelly.

  ‘We’ve lost Harding and Bonafontini.’

  Hoover’s lips twitched but other than that his expression remained the same.

  ‘These were the two you had following the Limey and the woman?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Tamm knew who both men were: the Kraut and Sneezy, both members of the supposedly mythical ‘Squad,’ commissioned to mete out extreme and terminal justice on people deemed deserving of it by the director. He also knew that they were under the unofficial or ‘blue memo’ orders of the man sitting in the chair beside him.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘They were found on the Super Chief, sir, en route to Los Angeles, jammed into the toilet facility of our targets’ compartment. They were discovered just outside of La Junta, Colorado, when the steward went into the room to make up the beds.’

  ‘They were travelling in the same room?’

  ‘Harding and Bonafontini, sir?’

  ‘Don’t be a fucking idiot. The targets.’ Not for the first time Tamm found himself wondering how such a supposedly pious and sinless man in public could curse like a longshoreman in private.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Were they screwing each other?’

  Tamm gritted his teeth and forced himself not to laugh. The Kraut and Sneezy? That was ripe.

  ‘I have no idea, sir,’ said Connelly.

  ‘Find out. It could be important.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Who killed them?’

  ‘I’d have to say the Russians, sir. It’s the only thing that fits. We also have some evidence that Zarubin is no longer in Washington. He managed to slip his tail, sir.’ Connelly paused. ‘A day or so later they found that professor floating in the ocean with his face half gone.’

  ‘Donovan’s runner?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Commie?’

  ‘Presumably. From what I understand that’s half who he hires.’


  That’s a boy, thought Tamm. Tell the man what he wants to hear.

  ‘You think it was Zarubin?’

  ‘Could have been, sir. It fits.’

  ‘Could he have been on the train?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘The targets?’

  ‘Long gone. Probably Kansas City. Flew out to Los Angeles.’

  ‘Who’s our man out there?’

  ‘Jack Tollett, sir.’

  Tamm nodded to himself. Jack Tollett was another one of the old boys from the Red Squad days.

  ‘Watching the Budberg slut?’

  ‘Yes, sir. As you requested.’

  ‘Red fucker. I’d have her thrown out if I could but it might upset our Limey friends.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Did I ever show you the drawings I have of her? The ones I got from W. C.’

  ‘Yes, sir. On several occasions. Very droll, sir.’

  ‘Aren’t they just?’ Hoover took a little breath and let it out with a strange puffing noise, half through his ruined, almost flat nose, half through his small pursed lips. The story was that he’d broken his nose when he was hit by a fly ball playing college baseball but Tamm knew better; working as a drugstore delivery boy when he was a kid Hoover had tripped on a cracked sidewalk. No college baseball team would have had him anyway, especially not as an outfielder; he was far too short.

  ‘Budberg,’ said Hoover.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘No sign of any activity?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I want that film.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We’ll get it, sir.’

  ‘Icing on the cake. I’ll put that son of a bitch into a hole that smart-ass cocksucker will never climb out of. You know who I mean.’