Red Rag Blues (15 page)

“Move it along. I've got to catch a train in five hours.” Steel was beginning to slump.

“My idea trumps that campaign. It also conveys to the sufferer the great benefit of applying 4DT
without using an illustration.”
Luis held up a sheet of paper.

Steel had slumped another six inches. He stared without expression. The headline read:
Insofaras.

“Should be two words.” His voice was as flat as his desk. “Insofar as. Two words.” He looked up at Luis without moving his head. “This is a joke?”

“Wordplay, perhaps.”

“No, this is a joke. My ass is on fire, I'm desperate for help, and Drexon's 4DT wants to tell me a joke. What else you got?”

Luis showed him another rough. The headline said
Piledriver.

“More funny business.” Steel glanced at the CV again. “You ever taken a loyalty test?”

“You mean I have to demonstrate my American patriotism before I'm allowed near the nation's piles?”

“Damn right you do.”

“If you don't like
Insofaras,
how about
Uppermost?
Slightly less brutal.”

“You spent too long in London,” Steel said. “This ain't Socialized Medicine. We take our health seriously. We don't joke about health.”

“I was in England when they were planning their National Health Service,” Luis said. “I'd have voted for Socialized Medicine.”

“You're a Lefty. A Comm-Symp. Get out. I wouldn't hire you if the Red Army was marching down Park Avenue.”

“Were
marching. Subjunctive.” Luis got out fast. Steel was heaving himself up from his chair, and it wasn't to shake hands.

*

He bought a stupendous sandwich: liver paté, cream cheese, smoked salmon, lettuce heavy with mayo, the combination thick enough to strain his jaws. “Excellent choice,” the counterman told him. “Enjoy it with pride.”

He nibbled his way into it, sitting on the steps of the public library at 42nd Street, quietly sweating through his undershirt. The penthouse would be cool but he wasn't ready to tell her he'd failed.

He felt better with food inside him. Failure wasn't an absolute. It was like poverty, it was relative. Nearby, a yellow cab and a city bus intercepted the same point in space. There was a bright bang that turned heads. A fender got ripped off. A shouting-match broke out. Luis felt even better. “What happened?” a woman asked. “Difference of opinion,” Luis said. “I didn't want the lousy job anyway.” She wasn't listening. “People ain't safe nowhere,” she said. “Cops don't care. You see a cop? It's worse'n Russia, this city.”

“There's a cop.” Luis pointed. “In fact, there's two.” She glared at him, said: “Smartass. Fuckin' smartass.” New York
women were dangerously unpredictable. He moved away, heading up Fifth for no especial reason.

Scribners Bookshop looked a good place to escape the heat and the traffic and the madwomen. He was browsing the shelves when he came upon a section marked
Intelligence/Espionage,
and was surprised to find that most of the books were about the spy, not as hero, but as traitor. The words “betrayal” and “treachery” often appeared in titles. Atom scientists, diplomats, politicians, businessmen, soldiers, spycatchers, everyone down to clerks and copy-typists had sold out. “Heaven help us,” Luis murmured, “is nobody to be trusted?” The answer rang in his brain like a great bell.

Kim Philby was eating toast and marmalade and doing
The Times
crossword more easily than was proper. The telephone rang; he ignored it. Another wrong number, probably. Every summer the trees grew, the branches scraped the phone lines, result: more wrong numbers, for which some poor bugger had to pay the GPO, when the sodding GPO should send a man round to prune the damn trees. Aileen came into the kitchen. “It's for you,” she said. “Harding. British Consulate. New York.” She had a tumbler of whisky.

“Isn't it a bit early for that?” he asked.

“Yes. I like to start early, in case there's none left, later.”

The phone was on the hall table. “My dear chap,” Philby said.

“Good morning, sir. It's about that new book you were interested in reading. I've had a phone call from the author. He says he's made changes.”

“I see. Did he elaborate?”

“Heroes have become villains, and villains have let the side down. His very words.” Short pause, while the transatlantic cable softly hissed and buzzed. “He quoted Alfred Hitchcock: the better the villain, the better the story.”

“Did he, by Jove?” Philby found a chair.

“He says he has to pay the typist a thousand dollars. I told him to contact me tomorrow.”

“Many thanks, Mr. Harding. I'll get back to you.”

Philby phoned Peter Cottington-Beaufort. An hour later they met in a pub car park on the edge of Sevenoaks. Kim got into Peter's car, an old Armstrong-Siddeley. It smelled like a warm afternoon in the House of Lords.

“I knew he'd come back,” Peter said. “They always do.”

“And now his heroes are villains. Could mean anything.”

“Don't fool yourself, Kim. He's threatening exposure.”

“But he has no proof,” Kim said. “I know precisely where in MI6 Cabrillo worked. He was nowhere near my show. He's bluffing, Peter.”

“Not the point.” Peter turned his head and sniffed the tiny, creamy rose in his buttonhole. “Point is, Cabrillo's dangerous, even if he invents everything. He might invent something about
you
that's more convincing than the real thing.”

“He's good at that.”

“Go to New York, tonight. 7 p.m. flight, Pan Am. The ticket will be at Heathrow. Mr. Cabrillo is good for nothing, Kim. Go and nullify him.”

“All right.” Kim stared through the windscreen at a pair of sparrows, dogfighting around the car park. Such energy, from such small and unimportant creatures. “It might be easier if I had a thousand dollars to offer him.”

“Yes. And you'll need money to live on. All will be arranged.”

They shook hands. Kim got out of the Armstrong Siddeley and into his own grubby Fiat. The sparrows were still hard at it. “She's not worth it,” he told them.

A black man with a salt-and-pepper crewcut, wearing a white singlet, slacks and tennis shoes, was dribbling oil onto Julie's naked body when Luis came in. She was lying face-down on a bath towel on the kitchen table. “Hello, uncle,” she said. Luis came to a stop and breathed so deeply that his ribcage creaked. He thought she looked as sleek and as slim as a dolphin. Did dolphins have neat bottoms with little dimples? Probably not. He cleared his throat. “I see you've met my daughter,” he said. The
man smiled. “This is Carl,” Julie said lazily. “Ask nicely and he'll massage you too.”

“Um … Not today, thank you.”

“You're scared. You think the blackness might rub off his hands. Ain't that true, Carl?”

“Hush yo' mouth!” he said. “Whatever that means.”

Luis took a shower, changed his clothes, counted his money. Carl had gone. Julie was wearing a white cotton robe, printed with soft yellow lemons. “That's new,” he said.

“Yup. I opened a credit account at Lord & Taylor. We're rich, and you're working at Dent & Bellamy, so we can afford it.” She kissed him on the ear. She ran her fingers through his damp hair. She rubbed a leg against the inside of his thigh. “Wealth is such an aphrodisiac,” she whispered.

“Dent & Bellamy,” he said. “They didn't cut the mustard. I turned them down.”

“No you didn't. Joe Steel kicked your sweet ass into Madison Avenue.”

“The man is a buffoon.”

“My pal the secretary phoned me. When you left, Joe had to send out for ice packs. His blood pressure went off the dial. What happened?”

Luis told her. “I still think ‘Insofaras' is a brilliant headline, but I've thought of something even better. How about ‘Notwithstanding'?”

“Forget it, Luis.”

“I'm tempted to manufacture the stuff myself, just so I can advertise it. Has the name ‘Piledriver' been patented?”

“Forget it! You're crazy, but I'm not. I didn't get this cotton thing at Lord & Taylor, it was on sale at Klein's. Just relax.”

“Money is no problem,” he said, and dismissed it like an idle servant. “Anyway, someone's offered me a one-thousand-dollar advance on my memoirs.”

“Am I in them? Show me.”

“They have yet to be written,” he said. “So I had better start.”

*

When he got into his stride, when something pleased his imagination, Luis could write non-stop. After five or six thousand words he was wet with sweat and starving hungry. Julie knew a good Chinese restaurant. He showered in three minutes and got
into one of his classy new summerweight suits, and they walked to the Studebaker. Stephanie, whom everyone called Stevie, was lying on the back seat, reading
True Detective.
She wore a sky-blue boxer's singlet, very loose, and plaid shorts, very short. “Hey!” she said. “Whyn't you come see me again? You promised.”

“I promised nothing. Anyway, how did you know—”

“Oh, I seen you drivin' around in this cute boat. Look, pal, I need you more'n ever. Vince is drivin' me bats.”

“Julie, this is Stevie. Stevie, Julie.” They got into the car. “Vince is your problem. My problem is I've got to eat before I lose consciousness.” He pulled out from the curb.

“Men,” Stevie said. She sat up and leaned forward. “They don't understand a woman's needs. You noticed that, honey? Take me. Married three times, an' still a virgin. Can you believe that?”

“I think I read it in Walter Winchell,” Julie said.

“Five hundred bucks,” Stevie told Luis. “Take you ten minutes, for Chrissake. Fifteen, tops. In and out.”

“So
you
do it,” Luis said. Dazzling rays of sunset carved Manhattan into blocks and sanitized the streets.

“Ain't work for a lady.” She looked at Julie. “Bet you never get the spiders out the bath. Bet you make
him
do it.”

“Sure I do, but not with a handgun.”

Stevie wasn't listening. She said, “I mean, it's just one bang, and bingo. Hey, is that a natural curl? You'd look terrific with bangs.”

“Stevie: go and see a priest, get some help,” Luis said. Lights changed to red and he stopped. Stevie reached forward and dropped a brown paper bag into his lap. He gasped; the bag was heavy. “My priest said I was doin' Vince a favor,” she said. “The sonabitch has it comin' to him, those his actual words.” She vaulted nimbly out of the car and trotted to the sidewalk.

First out of the bag was a roadmap of Connecticut. A red arrow pointed to a cross, labeled SWAMP. Next out was a piece of cardboard, showing a hand-drawn map of part of Greenwich Village. An arrow and a cross marked the address in West 10th Street of Vinnie the creep Biaggi. Stevie had also written it in full, together with his phone number. “Make sure he's in,” she had added. “He goes out a lot.” Third and last out was a Colt revolver. It had a barrel as long as a Cuban cigar. Luis opened the chamber. Fully loaded. A man in the car on his left said, “Betcha
can't hit the Chrysler Building.” The lights changed. Julie took the gun from him and hid it under his seat. “A cop sees that, you'll eat dinner in jail.” Luis was busy driving. “This town is full of kooks,” Julie said, “and she's leading the parade.” Luis nodded. “Awfully pretty, though,” he said.

Kim Philby checked into the Harvard Club. His membership of the Oxford & Cambridge Club gave him reciprocal rights there, and at 44th and Fifth it was about as central as you could wish. He had a soak in a hot tub to ease the stiffness of a night in an airliner, shaved, took a stroll around the block, and met Harding in the lobby. They had breakfast in the calm, wide-open spaces of the club dining room.

“You know I can't claim to be acting in any official capacity,” Philby said.

“Good gracious, sir, half our work here is not done in any official capacity. Besides, if what I hear is true, you'll soon be back in harness.”

“Time will tell, John. We must win back the trust of the Americans. No more shock-horror spy revelations.” Philby was prodding a poached egg as if the yoke held secrets. “A pity you haven't got an address.”

“He'll be back,” Harding said. “He needs money.”

“Not a problem. But he must bring his manuscript. No manuscript, no money. D'you think the appalling J. Edgar Hoover knows I've arrived?”

“Certainly.”

“Strange man.” Philby looked at the fork he was holding; it had a fine tremor. “As powerful as Beria, they say.”

“Beria's been arrested, sir.”

“So I believe. Betrayed by his own secret police. A very Russian ending. But we shouldn't patronize them, should we? Three hundred years ago, we were chopping the heads off
ministers of the Crown when they outlived their usefulness. Tidy solution. As someone remarked: ‘Stone dead hath no fellow.'”

“That was certainly Beria's philosophy,” Harding said. “So he has no cause for complaint.”

All evening, Luis had worked hard on his memoirs. He kept up the momentum next morning and finished by lunchtime. Seventy pages: about 25,000 words. The more astonishing revelations needed to be fleshed-out, but he could do that later.

“I hope you put plenty of conspiracies in it,” Julie said. “Americans are obsessed by conspiracies. If they can't find one, that's clear proof of a cover-up.”

“My story is one long conspiracy from beginning to end,” he said happily. “It abounds with traitors.” He clicked his fingers. “I'll call it
Traitors Abound.
Excellent! Thank you.”