Red Rag Blues (10 page)

“Is it true J. Edgar Hoover's a queen?” the other old guy asked.

“I need information about the couple you evicted last night,” Fisk said. “Miss Conroy and—”

“Them Reds? Soon's I saw them Commie bastards in my building, plannin' their stinkin' sabotage, I applied my democratic American boot to their Red asses …” He kept Fisk's shorthand busy for quite a while.

“Any idea where I might find either of them?”

“She had a dumb job in a bar. Which bar? Beats me.”

“Hoover never married, did he?” the second old guy said. “Pudgy little fellah. Looks like James Cagney without the balls.”

“You want my opinion,” the landlord said, “Hoover should investigate the Dodgers. That pitching in the ninth was criminal. They been infiltrated, you want my opinion.”

Fisk began checking bars.

Thirty minutes before midnight, Julie took the crosstown bus, to work the graveyard shift at Mooneys. Luis went with her. He'd failed to persuade her that he had ample money for both of them. “You dropped in on me,” she said. “You could drop out, just as easily.” He wanted them to take a taxi; she said if he didn't like the bus he should stay at home and read his book. It was raining. A taxi would have been good. The truth was she hated him for
having been so snotty on Staten Island. So indifferent to suffering. So hard.

He bought two umbrellas on 72nd Street. “That was lucky,” he said. “This is New York,” she told him. “Soon as it rains, some guy sells umbrellas.” They walked in silence up First Avenue to 86th.

The bar was hot and loud. Paddy Mooney saw her come in and beckoned. She followed him into the back office. “I know you had your troubles,” Mooney said. He was a stocky redhead with teeth like a barricade. “God knows I saw enough trouble in Ireland, enough to make me want to help.”

“I'm fired,” she said. “That it?”

“Fellah from the FBI was here lookin' for you. I said the name meant nothin', but you know what them bastards are like. Ferrets ain't in it, so they're not.”

“I've done nothing wrong.”

“Ah, shit. That won't help you, nor me either.”

He gave her a week's wages and they shook hands. She walked out of the bar and into the rain. Luis followed. “You did that,” she said. “First you lost me my apartment, now my job's gone. What next?”

Luis flagged down a taxi. “I suppose a roll in the hay is out of the question?” She hit him with the umbrella, hard. It broke. Of course it broke. It had been that sort of day.

Kim Philby ordered pigeon pie with new potatoes and French beans. His guest, Peter Cottington-Beaufort, chose roast shoulder of lamb with potatoes and broad beans. Both of them drank bottled Bass. One of the things they liked about the Oxford and Cambridge Club was its proper, traditional English food. No greasy foreign surprises. And the tables were widely spaced. No eavesdropping. Still, they spoke quietly.

“I do envy you your suits,” Kim said. “My chap's hopeless.” Peter smiled. He had a long, thin face that went with his tall, slim body and his long, melodic name. His smile curled like a bit of ribbon: up at one end, down at the other. “Your tailor's not your problem, old chap. He does his best with what you give him. The trouble is, you give him too much.”

“Well, I'm a bloated capitalist, I'm supposed to be fat.”

“I'm told you've cut down on claret,” Peter said. “That's good. Drink was one reason you got pulled out of Washington in '51, wasn't it? A bitter blow. I say: this lamb. Delicious.”

Kim frowned at his plate. “Every time I order pigeon pie I forget what damned hard work it is.” He abandoned the pigeon and settled for the pastry crust. “If you think I drank a lot, Peter, you should have seen what the CIA could put away. Martinis the size of flowerpots.”

“Extraordinary people.”

“CIA reckoned you were a pansy if you never got shit-faced, in their charming expression.”

Peter looked at his solid, unexciting face. No magnetic appeal there; but if you wanted quiet, unflappable, unvarying, utter competence, there was nobody to beat Philby. “I have some mildly encouraging news. The dust has settled in America. J. Edgar Hoover still loathes you but he has called off the hunt. I believe you have something for me.”

“There's a loose cannon rolling around New York. Luis Cabrillo. Took part in our Double Cross show during the war. It seems he strolled into the consulate and tried to sweet-talk a thousand dollars out of our man. Cock-and-bull story about funding his autobiography. Said I would vouch for him.”

Peter thought about it as he ate his last two French beans. “Let us consider the options,” he said. “It could be bluff. No book exists.
Or
he's written the Double Cross story, despite having signed the Official Secrets Act.”

“American publishers don't give a toss about the Act.”

“True.
Or
he's truffled up some juicy new secrets which he thinks British Intelligence might pay
not
to have published.”

“Then why isn't he in London?” Kim propped his head in his hands. He scarcely noticed when the plates were removed.

“One further possibility,” Peter said. “He's found some damaging stuff about you personally. Blackmail.”

“Double buggeration in spades,” Kim said gloomily.

“Another scandal is unthinkable. I caught a lot of flak when Burgess and MacLean did a bunk, scuttling away on a cross-Channel ferry in the dead of night. They weren't very welcome in Moscow, I can tell you.”

“If they hadn't done a bunk they'd be in the Tower by now. Or under it.”

“Well, we've got to keep you out of there, at all costs.”

“That sounds like bad news for Mr. Cabrillo,” Kim said.

“It's the only option,” Peter said, “and in many ways the tidiest. Yummy. Here comes pudding.”

They slept in separate beds, in separate rooms, in separate frames of mind.

Luis was happier now than he had been since the war ended. He was rediscovering the many pleasures of treating the whole world as a badly written farce which deserved to be rehashed for his private benefit. One of the benefits was money. He'd swindled the
Abwehr.
Milked them vigorously. He'd do it again to someone else. Just a question of finding another rainbow with a pot of arrogance at the end. Arrogance always paid well.

Julie puzzled him, but that was nothing new. All through the war, their love affair had been a roller-coaster ride. The longer it lasted, the faster and fiercer the ups and downs became. It trundled to a halt in 1945. The war stopped and so did they; in a curious moment of flatness and anticlimax they decided to love each other from afar. Peace made him nervous. He had seen himself married, pruning roses, selecting schools, organizing holidays. It was a ghastly outlook. He fled to Venezuela, spent money as if he could buy his future, and never once woke up without thinking of her.

Julie felt differently.

For eight years Luis had been a ghost hovering in a corner of her mind. When her life was busy, the ghost faded until there were whole months when she could barely remember his face. Then she would glimpse the reflection of a man in the window of a crowded, jolting subway train, and Luis would spring back to life. He wasn't as splendid as he thought, but he was fun in the sack and his idea of good citizenship was to make the world dance
to his tune. She missed that. Then the train stopped. The stranger turned. He was nobody. She got off the subway and New York reclaimed her.

She reveled in the place. New York was full of fizz. It had every kind of food at all hours, every kind of manners provided they were bad, and the sort of humor that drew blood and didn't wait for a laugh. Manhattan was awash with young men out of uniform, glad to have survived, ready to celebrate. Boyfriends came and went like the weather. She was clever, got jobs, made money. Fell in love a couple of times. Being in love was like plunging down a ski slope, almost out of control. Jokes were funnier, the air tasted fresher, nothing was impossible. Soon she fell out of love. “Who are you kidding?” she asked herself.

The years hustled by. Being a New Yorker suited her; she had enough friends, enough money, no problems. The bigots in America didn't bother her. It was a big country, there was room for a few loudmouths. Give them time and space and they'd fall on their faces. And then one day she ran slam-bang into McCarthyism, and she was the one who fell on her face.

It was a shock. Suddenly she was out of work. Suddenly the America she'd depended upon no longer existed. Friends faded away. Nobody said anything, and that was the trouble: her phone didn't ring, she wasn't asked to parties, movies, days at the beach. She was on the blacklist. She was dangerous.

No job, little money, few friends. And now Luis had blundered back. She needed a pal, someone with sympathy and compassion and tact, and fate had sent her Luis. He hadn't changed. He never faced reality. He altered it, faked it, dodged it. He was a joker. On the other hand, one small push would have been enough for her to tumble into bed with him. She knew it, and her guard went up like steel shutters in the path of a riot.

Max Webber wore aviator glasses for the audition. They were so black they made him look blind. He'd borrowed a leather flying jacket and a pair of cavalry breeches. He made a strong impression when he arrived at the hall, a disused gym in Brooklyn.
The audition was for a modern-dress version of Henry the Fifth that would tour schools and colleges in New England, and he was to read for the part of the king. “I'm David Meyer,” he told an assistant. “Yup,” she said, and ticked his name.

When he was called, he took a chair with him onto the makeshift stage. He sat calmly until the last whisper, the last cough, the last fidget and shuffle, had faded to an expectant hush. Then he let another ten seconds pass. Ten seconds is a long time when everyone is watching a man who is watching them.

Finally Max stood and spoke. He began the king's speech to his troops before the battle of Agincourt. He had the voice of a king and the bearing of a warrior, but within a couple of lines, everyone knew that this Henry was drunk. Not stupid-drunk; every word was clear, every phrase made sense. It was the clarity of the guy in the bar who should have gone home an hour ago, the guy who is impressed by his own eloquence. The longer he spoke, the drunker he got. At one point Max seized the chair one-handed and used it like a sword to emphasize his words, thrusting and slashing and fending off the enemy with a parry so fierce that he lost his grip and the chair sailed away to a splintering crash. He gave it a look of royal contempt; clearly he blamed the chair. By now everyone was laughing. This was no longer an audition; this was a performance. It won him a roar of applause.

“Can't use your interpretation,” the producer told him, “and you know I've got to hear the other guys, but believe me, you've got the part. Stick around.”

Max drank coffee, read a day-old
Times,
talked with an old pug who had wandered in from the street, thinking the gym was back in business. “I'm lookin' for easy work,” the pug said. “Actin' … After the fight game, it don't look too heavy.”

“Piece of cake,” Max said. “Nobody hardly ever hits you real hard.”

The producer came back, and took him aside. “You're Max Webber. I can't use you.” He was half-accusing, half-apologizing. “Somebody just recognized you.”

“I'll wear a beard,” Max said. “You want, I'll
grow
a beard.”

“And it's my ass when you get exposed.”

“Who's to expose? Your show ain't Broadway. It's touring New England schools, for God's sake! Nobody's heard of me in Frozen Hollow, Maine. Christ, nobody there's heard of Shakespeare.”

“They've heard of Joe McCarthy,” the producer said. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Personally, I wish someone would shoot the sonofabitch. Until then … I had to bust a gut to get funds from educational trusts. They find out I've hired someone who's listed, they'll cut me off at the knees. Can't take the risk, Max. It's not fair on the others.”

The ex-pug saw him leave and said, “Looks like you stopped one below the belt, pal.”

“Belts are bein' worn real low this season,” Max said. “I got mine down around the ankles.”

Julie showered and dressed, and left Luis still reading
Sweet Cheat.
She ate breakfast at a coffee shop. She walked across the park and shopped at Saks Fifth Avenue for underwear. That took most of her pay from Mooney's. She changed in Saks' ladies' room and dumped her old, frayed, graying underwear in a trash can. Now she felt better. Cleaner, stronger, smarter. She could be hit by a taxi and die with pride.

The day was bright, with enough breeze to cut the sunshine. Manhattan glittered. It was full of people in a hurry to do business. She had no business and she was in no hurry, but to loiter on Fifth was to be jostled. Get on or get off: that was the motto.

She got off—off the avenue, off the island, nearly off the city. She took the subway north, the IRT line right up through the Bronx until the tracks ended at Pelham Bay. The ride took an hour and cost a nickel. Worth it. She walked into Pelham Bay Park, where a lot of nothing was happening in all directions. Good. Now she could really relax, stop worrying. About what? About Luis. Being with Luis was like being part of a magnetic field that might attract or repel, you never knew which. Either way it never lost its grip. Here she was, as far from Central Park West as you could get for a nickel, and he was still as close as ever. There was no escape. She'd known it as soon as she saw him standing on the sidewalk in Hoboken. She was still in love with him, and he was still in love with her. It was a dismal prospect. It foretold a double dose of stress and folly; and the
knowledge that these would be laced with moments of astonishing happiness was no consolation. “Why can't the stupid bastard love somebody else?” she cried aloud. “And why can't I love some other stupid bastard?” She knew the answer; she'd found it years ago, inside a Chinese fortune cookie:
The heart has its reasons which the reason does not know.
Smarter than your average fortune cookie. “So explain!” she commanded her heart, but her heart pleaded the Fifth.