Billion-Dollar Brain (18 page)

At six forty-five the following morning my visit to the Brain began in earnest. In the mess hall I had orange juice, cereal, ham and eggs and coffee. There was scarcely any time for a cigarette before we were hustled over to the equipment store. We each got six khaki shirts and pants, one belt, one knife with knuckle-duster handle, socks and sets of underwear and a lightweight stetson. We changed into these outfits and assembled in classroom IB at seven forty-five A.M. Each uniform shirt had a large red shoulder patch with a white grid like three capital Fs jammed together. On my shirt Harvey had arranged that I wore the word ‘observer’, which meant I was able to remember a prior appointment when the going got rough. The badge meant ‘Facts for Freedom’, the instructor explained. He was a crew-cut Harvard man with sleeves rolled up and collar buttoned down. Around the room there were signs that said ‘Think Tall’. Every classroom had at least one of those signs in it. The foreign students
spent a lot of time having the meaning of that slogan explained to them. I don’t know if they ever fully understood it. I didn’t. In other parts of the building there were signs saying ‘50% of the USA is Communist dominated’, ‘Pornography and titillation are the weapons of Communism’ and ‘Without you the USA will become a province of a worldwide Soviet system’.

Neither the instructors nor the other students knew anyone’s real name, or even what they were giving as their name. We were given numbers. The first nine days of instruction (there were no days off—‘Communism doesn’t stand down on Sundays’) were devoted to desk learning. Geography, with special attention to the disposition of the Communist bloc and the Free World. History of the Communist Party, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Materialism inside the USSR. Class Structure of foreign countries. Strength of Communist Party in various foreign countries.

On the tenth day eight of the men on my course went to spend three days studying photography, four did locks and keys and seven went to study Roman Catholicism. (They were agents who would find their work easier if they posed as Catholics.) The rest of us had a series of lectures on Russian and Latvian etiquette, literature, architecture, religion and recognition of uniforms and fighting vehicles of the Soviet Army. We were then given a simple exam which consisted of crossing out stupid answers in order to leave the least stupid one.

On the fourteenth day we moved to a different section of the training building. This was to be Active Training. I nursed my damaged finger, and showed it to anyone who wanted me to join in the rough stuff. Each course had a ‘conduction officer’ who stayed with it all through the training. The training included knife work, cliff-climbing, gun-firing, plastic explosive, railway-destruction, night exercises, map-reading and five parachute drops: three by daylight and two at night. Apart from a Negro and a brace of Bavarians all the students were on the best side of thirty and they could run rings round us older men who saw only dubious advantages in agents who could run, jump and do forward rolls.

I had three days of Active Training. I had strained a muscle in my back, one of my toes looked septic, my finger was worse, and I was fairly certain that one of my jacket crowns was loose. Mind you, I’m always fairly certain that one of my jacket crowns is loose. I was probing around with my tongue and trying to decide about this when the phone by my bed rang. It was Signe calling from downtown San Antonio.

‘You won’t forget our dinner date tonight?’

‘Of course not,’ I said, although I had forgotten.

‘The Burnt Potato Club at nine thirty. We’ll have a drink and decide where to go. Right?’

‘Right.’

The Burnt Potato is a bar on Houston Street, in downtown San Antonio. Outside there is a scrollwork of pink neon that says ‘Striptease. Show now on. Twelve girls’. In the doorway there is a royal flush of girlie-pictures. I opened the door. The long room was dark, but a tiny light behind the bar showed the bartender which shot-glass held a full measure. I took a seat at the bar and a girl with sequin nipples nearly trod on my hand. The music ended and the girl took a bow and disappeared behind some plastic curtains. The barman said, ‘S’it gonbee?’ and I ordered a Jack Daniels. There were two girls near the juke-box but neither was Signe. My drink came, and a girl’s head came through the plastic curtains and shouted, ‘Nineteen jay’ to one of the girls at the juke-box. The record player moved convulsively and loud beat music began. The stripper gyrated slowly upon the tiny square of painted hardboard at the end of the bar. She unzipped her dress and hung it decorously on a coat-hanger. Then she removed her underwear without overbalancing—a feat for which she was applauded—and did a mammary swivelling walk along the bar-top. I moved my hand away. The rhythm and movement became more orgiastic until both ended in a sudden breathless silence. Another girl stepped out.

The bartender said, ‘What you think of the show?’ He gave me my drink and a membership card. I said, ‘It’s like eating chocolate with the wrapper still on.’

‘That’s the trouble,’ said the bartender. He nodded.

I said, ‘Did you have a blonde girl in here about nine thirty?’

‘Hey is your name Dempsey?’

‘Yes,’ I said. He passed me a note that was propped behind a bottle of Long John. The note said, ‘Urgent Sachmeyer’s’, then there was an address over in the Mexican sector near the expressway. It was written in lipstick. As I put the note in my pocket the door swung open and two military policemen came into the bar. Their white caps and batons shone in the soft light reflected from the stripper’s flesh. They watched the girl for a moment, walked softly behind the row of men at the bar, then slid gently and silently into the street.

‘Your doll?’ asked the bartender. He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Great doll.’

‘Yes,’I said.

‘See my name is Callaghan from the old country,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well I’m going to move along now.’

‘She’s a joker that girl of yours. Her friend came in and said “Reach for the sky” and pretended he had a gun and she played along with him right up to the time they left together. He was making all kinds of gags too. She wrote that note while pretending to look in her handbag. They’re real crazy friends, your friends. I like a sense of humour. You can’t get along without it. Especially in my job.
Why take just the other day…hey, you didn’t finish your Jack Daniels.’

The address Signe had written was south of Milam Square. Behind the Banana and Produce Company a derelict building was a-flutter with torn posters, ‘First choice for District Judge Papa Schwartz’, ‘Re-elect Sanders to legislature’, ‘Free parking for Funeral Home’. The streets were jammed tight with narrow shop fronts and grimy cafés. Religious statuettes and rat-traps shared a shop-window with dog-eared movie magazines and loaded dice. I found the shop I wanted; an open Bible and a quote from it in Spanish written across the glass in white-wash. A large plastic sign in the doorway said ‘Sachmeyer. Dentist. First Floor up. Go up.’ I went up.

There was a big plain-fronted wooden door with a sign that said ‘Come in’. It was locked. I felt along the ledge at the top of the door and sure enough the key was there. I let myself in. The first room was a waiting-room, a ramshackle place where grey stuffing oozed from knife slashes across the plastic seats. I went into the surgery. It was a large room, with two windows, which flashed with neon from the sign outside. The neon sign made little clicks as it changed colour. In the alternate pink and blue light I saw trays full of forceps and scalers, mouth lamps, mirrors and drills and two trolleys with more of them. There was an X-ray machine, rolls of cotton wool balanced upon the water-heater, matrix holders and
impression trays, and small glass shelves smiling with false teeth. There was a huge adjustable chair with one of those disc lamps above it. In the dentist chair there was a man. His body slumped lifelessly like a torn rag doll. His head had slipped out of the supports and his hands almost touched the floor. He was a large man with a hooked nose and a deep-lined, worried-looking face. From his mouth crawled a long, dead centipede of dried blood. He was pink and then blue and then pink and then blue. A motor-cycle cop with his siren on went roaring along the elevated expressway that was level with the surgery window. The siren died away into the hot distant night. I went close to the body. In the lapel there was an enamel badge with the FFF symbol. I don’t know how long I remained staring at him but I was disturbed by the noise of voices in the waiting-room. I picked up a dental chisel and resolved to sell my life dearly.

‘Liam. Is that you, darling?’ It was Signe’s voice.

‘Yes,’ I said, hoarsely.

‘What are you doing in the dark, dearest?’ she said, swinging into the room and switching all the lights on. Harvey was right behind her.

‘We were waiting for you downstairs,’ he said. ‘Didn’t expect you would prefer it up here with the molars.’ He laughed as though that was a particularly witty thing to say. There was another man behind Harvey who took off his jacket and slipped into a white coat. ‘I don’t think I’d better join you,’
he said in a heavy German accent. ‘This fellow will be coming round any moment now.’

Signe said, ‘Look at Liam’s face.’

‘Thought you’d discovered a vile plot?’ Harvey asked flippantly.

‘Dr Sachmeyer does the teeth of the American students at the Brain,’ Signe said. ‘You can spot a man’s nationality from looking at his dental work. Dr Sachmeyer has to give them European mouths.’

‘I’m starved,’ said Harvey. ‘Shall we have Chinese food or Mexican? Git along.’ He pointed his fingers like pistols and Signe raised her hands. ‘Dinner on me,’ said Harvey. ‘Maverick limey has negotiated the hell-fire of the Brain and the almighty trail-boss Midwinter has summoned him for a special assignment.’

‘What sort of assignment?’ I asked.

‘Assignment Danger. Da-da-da-di-da-da,’ said Harvey, imitating the opening chords of a TV serial.

‘What kind of danger?’ I asked although I had already decided that Harvey was a little drunk.

‘Being with the duchess,’ said Harvey, indicating Signe who struck him playfully. I had the idea that they had been quarrelling and hadn’t quite made it up.

‘That’s the kind of danger I can handle,’ I said.

Harvey’s hunger got the better of him only fifty yards down the street and even though Signe was keen to go downtown Harvey had his way. It was a wide-open Mexican restaurant where the menu was painted across the window. The TV high in the
corner was tuned to KWEX and the Spanish commentator was getting as frantic as the fighters. Below the screen, oblivious of the carnage, sat a group of downtowners radiating Guerlain and Old Spice and mixing with real people. Harvey ordered the complex Mexican food and it arrived promptly.

Harvey was clowning around pretending to be a gunman, which was his way of being sarcastic to me. Signe was being reserved and held my arm tightly all the time, as though she was frightened of Harvey.

‘What are you fidgeting around for?’ Harvey asked her.

‘It’s so hot in here. Do you think I could go to the powder room and take off my girdle?’ she said.

‘Go ahead,’ said Harvey. ‘Have a good time,’ but Signe didn’t move. She was staring at me.

The word ‘girdle’ solved a problem. The man in the dentist’s chair was the hook-nosed girdle salesman, Fragolli, who had been our contact in Leningrad. He didn’t know anything about America. How could he possibly have American dentistry? Harvey and Signe had hustled me out of there too quickly.

‘That’s right,’ I said midway through a mouthful of frijoles. ‘You two have been kidding me.’ I got up from the table.

Signe grabbed my arm tightly. ‘Don’t leave,’ she said.

‘You both lied,’ I said.

Signe looked at me with a wide-eyed look of sadness. ‘Stay here,’ she said and touched my
fingers and stroked them. The TV boxers jabbed and parried.

‘No,’ I said.

She lifted my hand and put the fingertips into her soft half-open mouth. I pulled my hand away from her.

One of the men at the corner table was saying ‘…name of an island where the most potent forces of nature were first revealed to man; that’s why they call the swimsuit a bikini,’ and the downtowners all laughed. I hurried into the street.

Lighted shops painted yellow patches on the pavement and huddles of men stood here and there talking, arguing and gambling. The shop lights illuminated them as though they were valuable items on display in a museum. There was a curious all-enveloping blueness that nights in the tropics have, and on the air was the sweet smell of cumin and hot chilli. I hurried back the way we had come, splashing through the puddles of yellow light and past a shop full of tiny blue boxers fighting a vicious silent war. I brushed through a group of Mexicans and broke into a run. Past the Bible in the window I swung into the doorway of Sachmeyer’s and up the stairs. At the waiting-room door there was a man in shirt-sleeves fanning himself with a straw hat. Under his arm was a heavy shoulder-holster and behind him in the doorway stood a policeman in blue shirt, bow tie, white crash helmet and riding breeches.

‘What’s the hurry?’ said the tall cop.

‘What’s going on?’ I said. To a policeman an immediate answer is a sure sign of guilt.

The man with the straw hat put it on his head and produced a lighted cigar from nowhere. He inhaled. ‘Dead punk in the dentist’s chair. Now you answer one o’ mine. Who in the name of Christ are you?’ A siren grew very loud. There was a yelp of tyres outside.

‘I’m an English reporter,’ I said. ‘I’m gathering local colour.’

Two more cops came clattering up the stairs with drawn guns. The switched-off siren was taking a long time to die. One of the cops behind me on the stairs put an arm-lock on me. The detective with the cigar spoke in the same unhurried voice. ‘Take this guy down to the station house. Show him a little local colour. Maybe he’ll tell you how he gets to know about murders in the city before you do.’

‘It’s just local colour I’m after,’ I said. ‘Not contusions.’

The blades of the siren were still making a very low groan. The detective said, ‘Take it easy with the limey, we don’t want Scotland Yard horning in on the case.’ All the policemen laughed loudly. That detective must have been at least a captain.