To Catch a Spy (20 page)

“Does she know about you and British Intelligence?” I asked.

“No, and she’s not going to. I probably shouldn’t have told you, but I’ve almost gotten you killed. I still might manage to do that. You deserve to know what you’re in for.”

I nodded and leaned against the wall. Grant kept checking his watch.

“Another strain on my marriage is that I’m on the board of the Hollywood Victory Committee, the clearinghouse for all movie talent for servicemen shows. I’m also on the board of the United Nations War Relief and the Jesterate of Masquers, a theatrical group that puts on shows for war workers. In short, I’m not home very much. What’s keeping him?”

“He’ll be …” I began, and Shelly burst into the room panting.

“Ran … up … the … stairs,” he said, holding his chest. “Need … to … sit.”

Grant got up and Shelly moved to the dental chair, where he immediately pulled out and lit a fresh cigar, which did nothing to help him catch his breath.

“What happened?” Grant asked.

“A … minute,” Shelly said, breathing deeply.

Grant looked at me.

“Shel, just nod if you delivered the envelope.”

Shelly nodded.

“Any problems?”

He shook his head “no.”

“Do you know if the secretary delivered the envelope?”

He nodded.

“Good. You delivered it and left.”

“Yes,” he got out.

“It’s done,” I said to Grant.

“Now you’re the target,” Grant said. “I should be here with you. Maybe after the dinner.…”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “If he contacts me, I’ll call you.”

“Right,” said Grant, moving toward the door. “And, thanks, Dr. Minck.”

Shelly, still having trouble getting his breath, waved a hand to show his acceptance. When Grant was gone, Shelly finally stopped panting and said, “Teeth need work.”

“His teeth are fine,” I said.

“Not his, hers, the secretary at Caroll College.”

“Don’t tell me what you’re going to tell me, Shel,” I said.

“Tell you what? The woman needs work. I told her I was a dentist and gave her a card. She said she would call me.”

I decided not to tell him what identifying himself to the woman might mean to his general future well-being. There was a knock at the door to the reception area. Shelly took the cigar from his mouth and called, “Come in.”

A very tiny woman who couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds came in, anxiously clutching a purse to her chest. Her hair was a badly dyed brown, and her eyes were wide with fear as she looked around the dental office.

“Mrs. Andropropov,” Shelly said. “You’re right on time.”

Shelly put on his smock while I looked at Mrs. Andropropov, who looked at me as if I might have an answer to some question she was having trouble forming.

“Have a seat,” Sheldon said.

The woman took small steps toward the chair and climbed in, still clutching her purse.

“Heard of Mountain, the wrestler?” he asked her as he prepared her for the reign of terror.

She shook her head “no.”

“He’s a good friend of mine,” said Sheldon. “A patient. I saved his smile. I’m going to save yours too.”

So far, I had seen no smile on Mrs. Andropropov. I went quietly to my office as Shelly began examining the tools laid out on the table next to the chair. He started humming “Listen to the Mockingbird.” By the time I was back in my office with the door closed, I could hear him singing as the whirring of his drill began, with its familiar skip every four or five seconds.

The phone started ringing when I got into the chair behind my desk.

“Gunther,” Violet said.

Gunther came on the line.

“Toby, I have some information on Caroll College.”

“Go on.”

“The president of the college is a man named Hans Uberfeldt, born in Austria, degrees in mathematics and science from Heidelberg University. Family is still in Germany. There is nothing, however, to indicate that he is anything but a loyal citizen of the United States, but …”

“He deserves a closer look,” I said.

“I shall do that.”

“Anything else?”

“No ties yet that I can find, but I’ll continue to look. The provost is Alexander Jackson Hamilton. Family dates back to before your Revolutionary War. Chairman of the college War Bond drive, which has been very successful.”

“Who hired Jacklyn Wright?” I said.

“I don’t know, but I shall endeavor to find out,” said Gunther. “I am in search of members of the senior faculty and the dean of the School of Performance, who’s on leave to work on a book on exercises in voice projection. One more piece of information on Dr. Hamilton. It could not have been he who hired Miss Wright. When she was given her present position three years ago, Dr. Hamilton was a full professor of mathematics at Middlebury College.”

“Model citizen,” I said.

“So it would seem.”

“President Uberfeldt might be our man,” I said.

“I have not checked out others on the administration, faculty, and staff,” said Gunther. “I will begin to do so. Toby, is it not likely that whoever you seek has nothing to do with Caroll College?”

“Very likely,” I said, “but I don’t know where else to look.”

“I shall continue,” Gunther said.

He hung up and I sat looking at the phone. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get a call, a knock at the door, a bullet in the stomach, or nothing but silence. After an hour of listening to Mrs. Andropropov moaning low and Shelly singing, I started to get up.

The phone rang again.

“Anita,” Violet announced. Anita came on.

“You getting anywhere?” she asked.

“Two dead men so far and a den of Nazis,” I said.

“And?”

“Nothing I can talk about over the phone. You working?”

“I’m working till ten,” she said.

“I think I’ll come by for some chili and sympathy.”

“How’re your neck and head?”

“Better. Could be even better than that. Could also be worse.”

I drove to the Regal drugstore and found a parking spot with no trouble. When I went in, I picked up another bottle of Bayer aspirin tablets, paid the cashier, opened the bottle, and downed three with a quick gulp.

When I moved to the lunch counter, Anita was serving a man in overalls. A pair of work gloves hung out of his back pocket, and a fading tattoo of a mermaid danced on his hairy forearm. The man said something. Anita poured him some coffee and laughed. Then she spotted me and came over.

“You look bouncy this morning,” I said.

“Guess I am. My daughter’s away for a week. War news is good. I’m getting a raise and I bought myself a new dress, a rayon print for $3.98 at Macy’s. I’ll wear it to the movies tonight.”

“Let’s make that Friday,” I said. “I have to save the United States from Nazis for the next couple of days.”

Anita nodded.

“Friday, fine,” she said. “But I pick the movie.
Princess O’Rourke
with Olivia deHavilland, Robert Cummings, and Jane Wyman.”

“I can live with that,” I said.

“Dinner first.”

“I can pay for that,” I said.

“Can I get you something?”

“Coffee,” I said. “ Chili. Spicy. I just had Trout Plaut. Trout baked in peanut butter. Can’t get rid of the taste.”

Anita poured me a mug of coffee and brought me a bowl of chili with a package of oyster crackers. I crumbled the crackers into the chili.

“Look at this,” said the man in the overalls, looking at his newspaper as he ate. “Dorothy Lamour toured war plants in Cleveland, and the women unionists named her a war hazard. Said she took the men away from the assembly line. Can you beat that? She comes to our place, and I damn guarantee you production goes way up—and not just production. Can you beat that?”

I couldn’t, so I drank my coffee. It was hot and strong. I ate my chili. It was spicy and helped me forget Trout Plaut.

A couple came in and sat on stools side-by-side between me and the man in overalls. They were young. He was a soldier in khakis, PFC. She had curly red hair cut short. They looked like they had just come from posing for a magazine ad to raise money for the savings bonds.

“Hungry?” he asked, touching her hand.

“Starving,” she answered, looking into his eyes.

She caught me looking their way and the young woman said, “We were married yesterday at Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire.”

She held up her left hand to show her ring.

“Beautiful,” Anita said.

“Perfect,” I said.

The man in the overalls said nothing. The couple ordered, and I drank coffee and finished my chili. A man in a dark suit and tie came in and sat down a few seats to my left. He was about forty and had a serious face. I looked at him. He didn’t look back. I looked at him in the mirror over the milkshake mixer. He didn’t meet my eyes there, either. He sat with his hands in his lap till Anita came to take his order. Coffee and toast.

Anita came back to me with a refill, and I whispered, “You know that guy?”

“Never saw him before,” she said, starting to turn her head to look at him.

“Don’t look his way,” I said.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“Probably just a customer,” I said.

Anita moved to work on the young couple’s order, and I tried again without success to get the man in the suit to meet my eyes in the mirror. He could have just been street trade. He could have been a cop or an FBI agent on my tail. He could have been a Nazi. He could have been working himself up to approach me and try to save my soul or sell me a vacuum cleaner.

I was almost through with a second cup of coffee. I was feeling a little better. Either the aspirin had kicked in, or the coffee had, or both.

The young soldier asked, “Restroom?”

Anita pointed to the back of the store. He thanked her and touched the young woman’s cheek. She took his hand and put her lips to it before letting it go.

“Young love,” said Anita to me as the soldier walked toward the restroom.

“It’ll last forever,” I said.

“Or till he ships out and leaves her alone,” said Anita. Then she recovered and with a sigh said, “Sorry.”

“Excused.”

The young woman smiled at us and dug into a plate of bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes. She had an appetite. A few seconds later the soldier was back.

“Excuse me,” he said to me. “I knocked at the door. Nobody answered. I think it’s stuck. Can you give me a hand?”

“Sure,” I said, downing what remained of the coffee in the cup.

I got off the stool and followed him to the rear of the drugstore. The door to the bathroom, which I had used many times before, was closed.

“It gets stuck sometimes,” I said, reaching for the handle. I turned it and it opened without a problem.

I looked at the soldier, who said, “Thanks. That door leads to the outside?” he asked, nodding at the delivery entrance next to the restroom.

“Yes,” I said.

“Let’s go out.”

Since he had a gun in his hand complete with a large silencer, I decided to do what he said. He stayed a safe yard behind me as I unlocked the service entrance and stepped outside.

“What about your wife?” I asked.

“By now she’s told your lady friend that she forgot something in the car and has left, saying she’ll be right back.”

There was a dark four-door Dodge with tinted windows parked just outside the door.

“Wait,” he said.

We stood there. The young red-haired woman who had said she was his wife came running around a corner toward us.

“Open the passenger door,” the soldier said to me. “And leave the door open.”

I did. The woman was with us now. When I had the door open, she patted me down for a weapon. My .38 was in the glove compartment of my Crosley on the other side of the building. There were times I would have salvaged a small amount of pleasure from being patted down by a pretty young woman. This wasn’t one of them.

The soldier handed the young woman his gun, and she stepped back to be a safe distance away from me. He went around to the driver’s side, got in, and closed the door.

“Get in,” she said, keeping the gun on me. “And don’t close the door.”

I got in and she kept the gun on me as she got into the back seat.

“Now close your door,” she said as she closed hers.

I closed my door.

“I have my gun pointed at your neck,” she said. “Sit quietly. I have orders to shoot you if I even suspect that you might be making a move.”

The soldier made a tight circle in the little delivery lot and aimed the car for the street. In the rearview mirror, I could see the drugstore delivery door fly open. The well-dressed man who had refused to meet my eyes came out, gun in hand, saw us, and leveled his weapon in our direction.

“He won’t shoot,” the soldier said.

And he didn’t. Instead, the man with the gun ran back into the drugstore.

“By the time he gets to his car,” the soldier said, “he’ll have no idea which way we are going.”

“Which way are we going?”

“To a place where none but those who do what they are told ever leave,” the young woman said.

I looked at her in the rearview mirror. She was smiling again, but it was a very different smile from the one she had given the soldier at the counter. It was the smile of a person who knew something I didn’t know.

We drove west in silence down El Segundo toward the ocean. About half a mile before we hit Highland, he turned down a small neighborhood street with few cars parked, lots of trees, and small houses with neat lawns with about fifty feet between them. We pulled into the driveway of one of the houses, where a woman in a dark dress, her hair pulled back in a bun opened the garage door. We drove in. The woman in the dark dress closed the garage behind us.

The soldier got out, and I reached for the handle.

“Wait,” the woman in the backseat said.

I waited till the soldier had come around and opened my door.

“Now,” the woman said.

I got out. The garage was empty, not a tool, not a can of paint. Shelves were empty. There were a few cobwebs in the corners. A single lightbulb was on overhead. There were no windows.

“Through there,” the soldier said, pointing to a door.