The House of Special Purpose

by Paul Christopher

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Connelly. Tamm wasn’t a hundred percent sure but he presumed Hoover was talking about his arch-enemy, Wild Bill Donovan. Donovan had been his putative boss at the attorney general’s office after he went off to war and became a hero, complete with the Congressional Medal of Honor, while Hoover stayed home on a deferment. The animosity was almost all Hoover’s and didn’t seem to be based on much more than Donovan’s relatively patrician background and the fact that he’d gone to a better law school – Columbia versus George Washington University.

  The director turned his gaze on Tamm. Shiny, wet little raisins in a blob of dough, thought the young man. Donovan looked like a hero, tall and handsome, while Hoover looked like the people he took such pride in arresting, jug-jawed thugs with beady eyes and five o’clock shadows.

  ‘So you think it was the Reds who killed our two?’ said Hoover.

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. I doubt it though. They didn’t have any reason to.’

  ‘Reds don’t need a reason. They got that fucker Stalin.’

  ‘Nevertheless, sir—’

  ‘Don’t give me ten-dollar words, Tamm. I want answers.’ The director paused, puffing on his cigar. ‘You know what I think, Tamm?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I think it’s the fucking Limey and the broad.’

  ‘He’s a cop.’

  ‘He’s a fucking Limey, and he’s probably a Red. Her as well.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible, sir.’

  ‘Damn right. Dollars to doughnuts they were the ones that did it. Harding and Bonafontini got caught with egg on their face and the Limey and the broad killed them. And goddamn it, Tamm, if they didn’t do it they are involved somehow, I promise you that. Some kind of Limey conspiracy Churchill and fucking Roosevelt have cooked up to get us into this fucking war.’

  ‘What about motive, sir?’ said Tamm.

  ‘They’re going to get the film for themselves. Blackmail Donovan and that other Limey, Stephenson, with it. Maybe even turn them into double agents.’

  Tamm thought about Wild Bill Donovan being turned by a news photographer and a Brit cop. It was silly. Not for the first time Tamm wondered if his boss might be just a little bit addled in the head. Maybe a lot addled. He’d heard some stories.

  ‘Do you want them picked up, sir?’ asked Connelly. There was an eagerness in his voice that Tamm didn’t like. Connelly was from the old ‘pistol-whip them until they talk, and after they talk bury them in a New Jersey dump’ school.

  ‘No. Not yet,’ said the director. ‘Follow them to Los Angeles. If they seem to be getting away from you, then take them, but not before. I want to squeeze the Limey until all the juice runs out of him.’ He stared at Tamm with his frog eyes. ‘That was humorous, Agent Tamm. Limey. Lime. Juice.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  It was a dismissal. The orders had been given, the meeting was over.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Monday, December 1, 1941

  Ventura, California

  Vassili Zarubin sat in the window booth of Townsend’s Cafe sipping a cup of morning coffee to go along with his two eggs sunny-side up, bacon crisp, white toast and pan fries. The whole meal was making him feel as American as all the men in the cafe with him, most of whom seemed to be dressed as businessmen or labourers. The two white-aproned waiters and the fat man named Billy who stood behind the counter working the grill seemed not to differentiate between their clientele, a man in paint-splashed overalls sitting on one of the swivelling chrome-and-red leatherette bar stools at the counter being served before a well-dressed man in a suit who sat with several of his friends in a booth.

  The restaurant had many of the small so-called jukeboxes, one for each booth and one for every two bar stools on the counter. When one person had made his choice and deposited his money, that song would be heard in all the jukeboxes in the cafe. They were presently playing something by Bill Bradley and his Orchestra titled ‘Scrub Me, Mama, with a Boogie Beat,’ which Zarubin didn’t understand at all, even with his excellent command of the English language, but which the other people in the diner seemed to be enjoying immensely. As far as he could tell, the lyrics told the story of how everyone was going uptown to hear a washerwoman clean her clothes in a particular tuneful way. In Russia Comrade Beria would no doubt have a bullet put in the back of Mr Bill Bradley’s neck, although Zarubin himself found his left leg bouncing lightly beneath the table in time to the music.

  The Russian mopped up the last of his egg yolk with a piece of toast just as one of the aproned waiters appeared and topped off his coffee. Then he took out a Camel and lit one, his attention now focused on the building kitty-corner across the intersection of California Street. The building had just opened its main doors. The structure dominated downtown Ventura, a four-storey construction of Renaissance Revival brick and granite complete with high curved windows, twisted columns and frolicking, artfully draped cupids dancing over the large entranceway.

  The entire main floor was given over to the First National Bank of Ventura. He’d walked past the building earlier in the morning and knew that the upper floors contained the offices of accountants, oil companies, lima bean and fruit exporters, customs brokers and most of all lawyers, two full floors of them, including one company taking up the entire third floor, Benton, Orr, Duval and Buckingham, which Zarubin presumed accounted for all the suits present in Townsend’s Cafe that morning. Almost on cue a dozen suited individuals dropped money on their tables or places at the counter, got up and left the narrow little restaurant. Vassili checked his wristwatch: precisely nine a.m. He himself was wearing a pair of off-the-rack rayon slacks, a plain white Van Heusen shirt with a striped Arrow tie, a tweed jacket and a very ordinary pair of Nettleton loafers. The sort of outfit no one remembered at all, which was precisely the effect he was looking for.

  Zarubin stubbed out his cigarette and dropped three dollars on the table, securing it with his half-empty water glass. He edged around the table, sliding out of the booth, and pushed open the glass door. It was a perfect day, bright cloudless sky, a light breeze and the temperature in the mid-seventies. Early winter in California. He checked for traffic, then crossed over to the bank and went inside.

  The interior of the bank was as ornate as the exterior with decorative mouldings, a box beam ceiling, marble floors and mahogany counters. Potted palm trees were scattered around the perimeter of the large room and all the brightwork above the counter was highly polished brass. There were half a dozen tellers already hard at work as well as several desks for loan officers and one that had a triangular plaque that read: SAFE-DEPOSIT BOXES. Vassili crossed over to the safe-deposit desk under the bland, uninterested eye of an armed, uniformed security guard and sat down. The woman behind the desk was in her late thirties, her hair dark brown with flecks of grey and pulled back into an efficient bun. Zarubin did a quick check, upgrading her age into the early forties by the lightly spotted, slightly arthritic look of her hands and the faint skein of crow’s-feet at the corner of each eye. She wore no rings on her fingers, although she’d allowed herself a single string of nicely matched cultured Add-A-Pearls, probably one of the iridescent spheres for each intolerable year she’d worked at the bank. She was wearing a checked American Golfer dress with a high collar that was several years too young for her. She left him sitting for a long minute, pretending great interest in the ledger she was leafing through, then looked up at him.

  ‘Yes?’ Her voice was a little on the rough side, as though she smoked too many cigarettes or maybe had one too many sherrys when she went home to her lonely house each night. The tone was considerably more pleasant than he’d expected.

  ‘I’d like to rent a safe-deposit box.’

  ‘Certainly,’ she said and smiled. She really was quite attractive. She held out one hand across the desk. ‘I’m Miss Kristensen, by the way.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Zarubin, taking the hand. It wa
s smooth and warm. He could detect a faint brush of perfume coming from her wrist. Something very subtle and elegant. She had an expectant look on her face and for a moment he was confused.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said finally. ‘Andy Pelham. Just moved down from Santa Barbara.’ After killing both Pelham and Harte, he’d gone through the house carefully, picking up anything he thought might be useful, including Pelham’s wallet and passport, which appeared to have never been used. Miss Kristensen went into her desk drawer and brought out a grey metal box about seven inches long and four inches deep. She produced a key from one of the pockets of her dress, opened the box and withdrew a blank card.

  ‘Can you spell the name?’ she asked. Zarubin did so and the woman printed it neatly on the card. ‘Occupation?’

  ‘Shipping,’ said Zarubin, remembering the board full of company names at the side entrance to the building.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ she said, looking up at him and smiling.

  ‘It can be,’ he answered. ‘Mostly it’s just paperwork.’

  ‘Like banking,’ she answered and they both had a little laugh. ‘Address?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s 540 East Santa Clara. Apartment eleven. The Medwick.’

  ‘That’s just a block or so from here,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Down towards the harbour. It’s just temporary until I find a house.’

  ‘We do a lot of real estate transactions,’ said the woman, her smile broadening. ‘I’ve just got my licence. Maybe I could look around for you.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of a woman real estate broker.’

  ‘More and more of us every day.’

  ‘Let me think about it,’ said Zarubin. The last thing he wanted in Ventura was a house but it was in his best interest to keep the woman happy. ‘Let’s get the safe- deposit box rented first.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, her tone cooling slightly. ‘How large a size would you be needing? We have three.’

  ‘The smallest,’ Zarubin answered.

  She made a tick on the card. ‘For how long? The shortest term is one year.’

  ‘I’ll take that.’

  Another tick. She made two little X marks on the card and handed it across to him. ‘We’ll need a password there, printed please, and your signature below it.’

  ‘Password?’

  ‘Yes. It’s part of our procedure at the bank. We check your signature and we check your password. Then we give you access to the box.’

  ‘What if I forget the password?’

  ‘Choose something simple.’ She handed him her pen, a slim Parker Debutante with transparent bands through it so you could see the state of the ink supply. He wrote in the word Harte and then signed his name as Rupert Andrew Pelham. He handed the card and the pen back to Miss Kristensen. She looked at the card. ‘Interesting password.’

  ‘My mother’s maiden name.’

  ‘Well, I guess you won’t forget that.’ She was smiling again.

  Or the name of a man you’ve recently murdered. He smiled back. ‘I take back what I said about lady real estate agents.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Why don’t we have dinner tonight and discuss it?’

  She sat back in her chair, the smile stiffening slightly but not by much. ‘Are you making a pass at me, Mr Pelham?’

  Zarubin was vaguely aware what a ‘pass’ was but he wasn’t about to test his command of American vernacular.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, smiling. ‘I think I’m asking an attractive, newly licensed real estate broker out for dinner to discuss business.’ He paused. ‘And it’s not Mr Pelham. It’s Andy.’

  ‘Now I know you’re making a pass… Andy. And I accept. Why don’t you pick me up here around six? There are plenty of good restaurants in the area.’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Zarubin.

  ‘The box is ten dollars a year.’

  ‘Fine.’ He took Pelham’s wallet out of his back pocket, took out one of Pelham’s tens and handed it across the desk. Miss Kristensen scribbled out a receipt and handed it to him along with the key. He dropped it into his pocket and stood up, still smiling even though he knew the whole thing with the password could ruin his careful plan. It had never occurred to him.

  ‘Six o’clock,’ he said.

  ‘Six it is, Andy,’ the woman answered. ‘And I’m Karen.’

  Vassili Zarubin kept smiling. Truly, America was a land of opportunity.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Monday, December 1, 1941

  Los Angeles

  Their movements after leaving the Super Chief had been complicated, done mostly at Black’s request. He knew perfectly well that there was no love lost between Stephenson and Hoover and he assumed the director’s bullyboys would be waiting for them when they reached Los Angeles. In light of this he consulted with Jane and the schedules and discovered that the flight available to them stopped to refuel in Salt Lake City. Arriving there, they got off the plane and found a small freight and cargo company that was flying to Red Bluff, California, just over the Nevada line. From there they found a second freight company with a flight down to Bakersfield and hitched a ride, even though the pilot said his boss didn’t like it when he took passengers. Something about insurance. Black made the doubts go away with a hundred dollars of Fleming’s money. It was two in the afternoon by the time they arrived. The airport was a modest collection of two-storey white stucco buildings, a few small hangars and a single runway but it was big enough to have a Hertz desk and a cafe. Jane rented them a Chevy Super DeLuxe and then, famished, they both went into the cafe. Morris ordered toad-in-the-hole with chips, which had the waitress’s eyebrows arching until Jane explained what chips were and described the concept of sausages baked in batter. Jane had a cheeseburger.

  ‘I’m probably worrying for no reason,’ said Black, carving up a rubbery egg and spearing a few french fries on his fork, ‘but better safe than sorry.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’ Jane shrugged. ‘Hoover’s little boys can’t cover every airport and bus station around but they could cover L.A. National and United in Pasadena as well. And they’ll probably be watching Budberg, you know.’

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ said Black. He mopped up a suspiciously orange pool of yolk with some toast and washed it down with the last of his coffee. ‘Ready?’

  ‘When you are.’

  They paid the waitress, went out into the blistering heat and climbed into the Chevy. Black helped Jane pull the roof of the car back into its slot behind the rear seat and then they were off. Jane went down the dusty dirt road and turned south on Highway 99, following the arrow-straight stretch of asphalt down the San Joaquin Valley, aiming for the rising peaks of the Tehachapi Mountains and their final destination.

  Two and a half hours later they were in Los Angeles. Jane stopped at a pay phone and made reservations for them at the Del Capri Motor Hotel on Wilshire. Twenty minutes later they had reached their new temporary home. It was four thirty in the afternoon.

  ‘It’s eight bucks a night, single,’ said Jane as she rolled the rental car to their appointed slot in front of the door to their rooms. ‘But the coffee shop is good and so is the bar.’ It was also conveniently close to the Russian princess cum NKVD agent and literary lover, Moura Budberg, who was less than a mile away on the edge of Beverly Hills. They climbed out of the car, retrieved what little luggage they had from the trunk of the Chevy and Jane handed Morris Black his key. She looked at her watch. It was moving towards dusk but the air was dry and warm, nothing like the bone-chilling cold of Washington or the damp chill of New York at this time of year. She was beginning to think she’d made a mistake bartering for a ticket to the European war zone. California had some very tempting assets.

  ‘I want to get cleaned up and put on some fresh clothes,’ said Jane. ‘Why don’t you call our Russian friend and set up a meeting for around six?’

  ‘All right.’ Black nodded. ‘You have the number, I presume?�
�

  ‘Granite 87791. Think you can remember that?’

  ‘Of course.’ He parroted the number back at her. They separated, Jane going left, Black going through the door to the right.

  Morris Black closed the door behind him and let out a long breath. He put his suitcase down and looked around the room. It was remarkably close to how he’d always imagined an American motel room would be. There were two double beds with a small night table between them, the beds covered by hideous flower- patterned and quilted coverlets made from some bright yellow fabric.

  The headboards were also padded and quilted with the same cloth and the yellow on the walls was accented by a slightly less garish shade. There was a large Spanish-style wooden chest at the foot of each bed that matched the night table and two chests of drawers in the same style. Everything was alike and there was two of everything with the exception of the night table.

  The window, which looked out onto the pool at the far end of the room, was covered with the same fabric as the beds. Between the chests of drawers was a connecting door to Jane’s room, which was bolted. He leaned towards the door and could hear the faint sound of a shower running. He sat down on the edge of one of the beds, lit a cigarette and smiled. He hadn’t had a proper bath since leaving England, only showers, just like the Americans.

  His mind was suddenly wiped clean and filled with the startling and uncomfortable image of Jane in the shower. He tried to brush it from his thoughts but the image refused to remove itself. Ever since they’d met he’d found himself drawn to the woman; to her obvious intelligence, her forthrightness, her laughter and her healthy good looks. She was the fantasy New York girl he’d always imagined in his life, smart but without the upper-class associations he’d always felt with Katherine, the only other American woman he’d known. He smiled again and yawned. His mother would have been polite to Katherine had they ever met but she would have taken Jane to her heart. He laughed out loud. Knowing his mother, she’d probably have taught her how to make a good Jewish meal, from herring to macaroons.