Stallion Gate (24 page)

The tour bus pulled away without Gold. He was walking fast, trousers flapping around short legs. Joe looked back. Augustino had disappeared from the
portal
. Joe had to trot across the plaza flagstones to see Gold head toward Woolworth’s, where he’d started out, then make a right past the Rexall Drugs and left on Don Gaspar Street, which wasn’t much larger than an alley, and hurry past the bars and the pawnshops. Joe stayed a block behind, but Gold seemed unconscious of the possibility that he was being followed.

Two blocks from the plaza, along the avenue called the Alameda, the Santa Fe River resembled either a dried-up open sewer or a creek. Rocks, brambles and rusted cans filled the bed, although cottonwoods grew luxuriantly on the near bank, tapping the dampness below. A concrete span called the Castillo Bridge led to an opposite bank of poplars and, beyond, the white dome of the state capitol in the distance. In the middle of the bridge’s walkway, Klaus Fuchs smoked a cigarette and contemplated a scooter abandoned or carried
along by some past flood that had filled the river. The tires were gone, perhaps stripped in one of the war’s rubber drives. Fuchs rested his foot on the middle of the three iron pipes that served as guardrails. A folded newspaper was tucked under an arm. Joe stopped in the shadows of the cottonwoods to watch.

As Gold walked onto the bridge he began feeling his jacket pockets, pants pockets, shirt. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. He reached Fuchs. Fuchs fumbled through his own pockets, found a match, lit Gold’s cigarette and didn’t wait for a thank-you before leaving, a grim Kewpie doll marching off the bridge and up the Alameda. Gold assumed Fuchs’ stance on the bridge, foot on the rail, gazing at the scooter on the dry rocks underneath the span.

Up the Alameda, Fuchs got into his Buick. He hadn’t come in the bus; he’d avoided the plaza completely. No more than two words could have been said on the bridge, Joe thought. Gold pondered the river, the branches overhead, and through the screen of poplars the faraway cupola on the state dome. He smiled at two girls on bikes. The tour bus rolled by, heads swiveling, leaving a trail of muffled facts and dates. Gold snapped a look over his shoulder in Joe’s direction, but out of fleeting caution and not because he’d seen Joe move. Then he relaxed, finished his cigarette, stifled a yawn that closed into a smile of relief, flipped the butt and left the bridge.

Gold walked down the Alameda, turned on Guadalupe and again on San Francisco, making a loop back
toward the plaza. At the Lensic Theater he stopped to read a playbill for
Here Come the Co-eds
with Abbott and Costello. Seeing his reflection, he brushed the blueness of his cheek. Passing a moment later, Joe saw his own reflection, a sergeant in a rumpled uniform, hair lank, face ominous.

The plaza was busier now. Tourists spilled out of Woolworth’s to stop Indians and ask them to pose. Like a man breasting waves, Cleto, the necklace vendor from Santo Domingo, stood in the middle of the sidewalk, arms of turquoise necklaces outstretched. His gray braid had come undone, the belly of his shirt was spotted with chili, and still he maintained an expression of majestic contempt. Gold sidestepped the crowd around Cleto and then had to wait for Army trucks to pass. Across the street, at the La Fonda’s loading station, porters in
mariachi
vests shuffled suitcases.

Joe slipped by Cleto. Once in the hotel, Gold would be out of reach. Something had happened on the bridge, though Joe didn’t know what. Gold stepped up on the curb, newspaper tightly under his arm. It was the
Albuquerque Journal
. Gold had been carrying the
New Mexican
when he went to the bridge. In his mind, Joe watched again as Gold, cigarette stuck to his lips, feeling his pockets for a match, walked onto the center of the bridge and joined Klaus Fuchs, who handed his folded newspaper to Gold the better to find a match in his jacket, brusquely light a stranger’s cigarette, take back his newspaper and leave Gold to a solitary view of the
Santa Fe river. Not
his
newspaper, though: Gold’s paper. They’d switched.

At the loading station, Joe grabbed Gold, who gave an involuntary hop of surprise.

“I was hoping I’d see you again,” Joe said.

“You were?”

More cars were parking; more suitcases were being unloaded. He encircled Gold with an arm and started to lead him out of the way.

“I was thinking how you lost your Stetson. A friend of mine has a shop around the corner. Come on—we’ll pick you a new hat.”

“I don’t want to trouble you.”

“No trouble.”

Gold struggled discreetly. Keeping a grip on him was like squeezing a beachball.

“I have a call to make.”

“Right around the corner. Just take a second.”

“Joe! Over here!”

It was Anna’s voice. She stood on the far curb, and was wearing the turquoise necklace he had given her; in her hair was the silver pin he’d seen on the
portal
, and in her hands was the black pot that Augustino had been admiring. With her Hawaiian shirt, she achieved a Pueblo-Hebrew-Polynesian beauty. She also had a Maytag’s bag. It was the weekend; why wouldn’t Anna be in town shopping? She crossed the street behind a tour bus as it pulled in front of the hotel. The FBI agent behind her waited to cross; she wouldn’t be hard to follow.

“It’s a pot of Sophie’s.” She showed the contented smile people wear when they suddenly take possession of a new town, when they’ve decided they will stay awhile and, against all odds, are comfortable. She paid no attention to Gold, the porters or the people hopping down from the bus.

“Go to the bar,” Joe told her. “I’ll be right there.”

“See what else”—she carefully put the bowl into the bag and took out a record: Billie Holiday’s “Lover Man”—“my American education.”

Gold got one hand free and gave it to Anna. “Harry Gold.”

Joe was trying to steer Anna toward the La Fonda when Oppy came out of the hotel and took in the trio on the curb with a strained grin. His eyes looked out from wells of exhaustion.

“Where the hell have you been, Joe? I’ve been waiting for half an hour.”

“Harry Gold,” Gold said, and offered Oppy his hand.

“Am I interrupting your private business and affairs?” Oppy asked. He disregarded Anna and ignored Gold’s hand. “Santa told me you were out here. You went for a walk, a drink, a little spree?”

“Can you wait a minute?” Joe asked.

Cleto inserted himself in front of Gold and presented an arm draped with necklaces. “Two dollar.”

People from the bus gathered around Cleto and pushed Gold aside.

“I have to make an appointment with a sergeant?” Oppy asked. “With my own driver? And where were
you last night? I went by your room and you weren’t there.”

“I went out for a second.”

“I came by twice,” Oppy said. “I looked all over and couldn’t find you. In the Army isn’t that called AWOL?”

“Ask me where he was,” Anna said. Oppy flushed as if she’d slapped him across the face.

The tour bus pulled away and Cleto moved on.

“Please ask me,” Anna insisted.

Oppy bent his head down like a man on a cross.

“No?” she said. “Well, if you do think of any questions, I will be at the bar having a very early, not-so-perfect martini. I will be returning to the Hill later with Klaus. Since you want to be sure where everyone is at all times.”

Oppy didn’t raise his head until she was gone, and then blinked as if he were trying to will away a scene. “Joe, where were you?”

Gold was already gone. Joe saw him trotting up the street past a camera shop; as the tour bus rolled by, Gold skipped off the curb and jumped onto the running board, his newspaper clutched under his arm. “I met a spy,” he said.

Together, Joe and Oppy walked a block to the old Spanish courtyards on Palace Avenue. This was the Hill bus stop and Joe’s jeep was parked outside, but Oppy opened a wrought-iron door to the smallest courtyard, a narrow passageway of carved beams and squash blossoms around a browning lawn. The screen door at the
inner end of the courtyard was the Hill’s anonymous parcel drop and reception center in Santa Fe.

“You mean Gold,” Oppy said in a low voice although there was no one else in the courtyard. “Augustino told me about him. Augustino is handling it. I don’t see how you’re involved.”

“Gold was in Santiago this morning.”

“Augustino is handling everything. What you can do is stay out of Captain Augustino’s way. Let’s hope you haven’t scared Gold off. You know, Joe, we are fast approaching the climax of this enormous endeavor. I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with you or your adventures anymore, not when the effort of thousands of people and the lives of many thousands of soldiers are hanging in the balance. You are the smallest possible factor in Trinity. Please don’t fuck it up. Stay out of my way, stay out of Captain Augustino’s way and, if you want to do Anna Weiss a great favor, stay out of her way, too.”

How high the
moon
? the horns asked. Tables sat on circular tiers around the dance floor and bandstand, each table set with red cloths and candles, some with sweating pails of champagne.
How
high the moon? trombones wondered. Waiters in red jackets balanced steaks on trays. Wrought-iron sconces lit the curved mock-adobe wall. Out on the hardwood, young officers danced with women in full skirts and puffed shoulders, blondes coiffed like Ginger Rogers, brunettes like Dorothy Lamour. The club comfortably held two hundred diners and dancers, and another forty at the bar.

The sax section reinterpreted the question as How
high
the moon? The lead sax stood to pursue the matter with a stutter of riffs. When the clarinet argued in falsetto, Joe thought of Harvey. The bass man thumped at the musical question, passed it to the drummer, who tapped it on the top cymbal, let it slip out onto the snare drum and, when it bounced from there, socked it into the bass drum. How high
the
moon?

In front of a red plush curtain the band wore white
Eton jackets, the music stands were white with glittering clefs and the piano was white as a tooth, although the pianist was in khaki. Joe caught the tune in his right hand way up the keyboard, as if everything had been delicate introduction. He went at the tune like Basie, like a chick pecking at a diamond, until he turned the hand to boogie-woogie, paused for a horn reprise, and at the horn’s last brassy gasp came down the keys in slowly assembling minor chords.

“Remember how I enlisted, the concert at midnight?” Joe had asked Anna. The interesting thing was not that he was willing to bribe Shapiro in order to leave the Hill and drive to Albuquerque five days before Trinity, but that she was willing to go with him. For the occasion she wore her hairpin and a long green velvet Navajo skirt. Pollack had given her a gardenia for her hair, and she sat with the owner of the Casa Mañana at his table near the rear by the bar. In his tux, Pollack looked more like an African ambassador than a nightclub owner. He poured champagne for her and drank seltzer himself.

“One more time!” the sax section shouted.

This time, Joe played “Moon” with snatches from “Blues in the Night,” “Swingin’ the Blues,” “Blowin’ the Blues Away,” sliding across the luminous melody. He could feel everyone moving with him, as if a lid had been taken off the club and unveiled a starry, cerulean night; these people were ready for the impossible. Better than a moon in June was a moon in July. They’d been at war for five years and now the European war
was over, the Pacific war was almost over. “Blue Skies Smilin’ at Me,” he injected, and the entire club seemed to rise. If blue skies were going to explode on them, they were ready, so he made the melody “… bluebirds singin’ a song” even as he brought the “Moon” down a chromatic descent, a chord at a time. The tunes merged and split again, accelerating until keyboard and crowd swung between flight and plunge and he cued the horns, who stood and hit the Charlie Parker riffs that settled the argument by demanding
How high the moon? How high the moon
? as if it were the sun.

“Is this the Casa Mañana?” Pollack asked Joe when he joined the table. “Is this not a wonderful club?”

“The best.” Joe waved off a drink.

“You said you were partners with Joe’s father.” Anna played with her new hairpin, which she had taken out for the gardenia.

“With Mike Peña,” Pollack said.

“Doing what?”

Pollack glanced at Joe. “Distribution, mainly.”

“A dangerous business,” Joe said. “Mike was distributing a load of Schenley up from Mexico one night when a tire blew or he hit a cow or someone drove alongside and shot him in the head. The truck crashed and the gas and booze blew like a Molotov cocktail.”

“It wasn’t clear whether a bullet was found,” Pollack said.

“The investigation was led by a Judge Hilario Reyes,” Joe explained. “It was very inconclusive.”

“I sent Joe down to El Paso before he could get
himself into trouble,” Pollack told Anna. “I had a brother working in the circus. I thought Joe was going to feed the elephants, but he caught on to music real fast. Of course, he used to play the organ in the pueblo even before then. He was a choirboy and everything.”

“Did Mike like your music?” Anna asked.

“No.” Joe had to laugh. “He hated it.”

He took her onto the floor and they danced to “Flamingo,” the Ellington version.

“Are there clubs like this in Chicago?” she asked.

“Great clubs up there.”

“Would you go to Chicago to play?”

“No. When I get out of the Army, I’m not going to take orders from anyone. I’m going to have my own club. For the first time in my life I know what I want.”

“And what is it?”

“This.” He took in the seraphic row of white music stands against the red velvet, the warm languor of the women in their long hair and short dresses, the waiters gliding under trays of iced drinks, and the music curling within the circular Hollywood-adobe walls, eddying and overlapping into echoes that asked for a sharp piano riff, the stab of a minor chord.

“It must be wonderful to know what you want,” Anna said.