To Catch a Spy (23 page)

“FBI,” I explained.

“You lead an exciting life, Toby,” she said, bringing me the pie and coffee.

“Some days,” I said, washing down four aspirin from the bottle in my pocket with the coffee.

“I’m not sure I like it that exciting,” Anita said, playing with a loose strand of her dark blonde hair.

“Sure you do,” I said. “Otherwise you would have walked out after that night at the airport.”

She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I suppose you’re right. Are we still on for the movie tomorrow night?”

“Still on,” I said, digging into the pie. It was just right. “If something comes up …”

“You’ll let me know,” she said. “Now you owe me two movies.”

“Name one,” I said.

“Footlight Glamour
with Blondie and the Bumsteads,” she said.

“You’re on,” I said.

While I finished, Anita told me that after February 2, point-rationing tokens were going to be used instead of paper coupons.

“Company in Cincinnati is turning out twenty million fiber tokens a day,” she said. “Can you imagine?”

“Cincinnati? Yes. Fiber tokens? No,” I said.

“And listen,” Anita went on, leaning forward. “To show you what a crazy world we’re living in, an eight-year-old Negro girl gave birth to an eight-pound baby girl. Can you believe that?”

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Both girls are fine,” Anita said with a sigh. “And just last night a Santa Claus dummy was stolen from downtown Los Angeles.”

“Is there a reward for finding him?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Wait a second.”

A fire truck went by outside, its bell clanging. The bell started my head throbbing. I touched the back of my head to be sure my stitches were still neatly in place. They were.

Anita came back with a small bottle of peroxide and a roll of cotton. She leaned over the counter to dab at my cuts, the ones she could reach.

“Ever consider another line of work?” she asked as she found a scratch behind my ear.

“Pest control,” I said.

“Exterminator?”

“I’ve got a head start. Mrs. Plaut already thinks I’m in pest control.”

“And an editor,” she reminded me.

“A man of many talents,” I said.

“And bruises,” Anita said. “I’d say ‘take care of yourself,’ but I don’t think it would do any good.”

It was my turn to touch her cheek.

I finished my pie and coffee, placed two quarters for the and a dime neatly on the counter, and headed for door.

I had one stop to make before I headed home. My latest wounds and torn clothes earned me some odd looks while I shopped at a nearby Ralph’s, but no one said anything except the young girl at the checkout counter.

“What happened?” she asked.

She was skinny, freckled, straight blonde hair, no makeup, kind of innocent-cute.

“Nazis,” I said. “They tried to kill me.”

She nodded her head and put on the bland mask she stored for kooks.

“That’s too bad,” she said, totaling my purchases and bagging them.

“Things like that happen to me,” I said.

Behind me a woman waiting to have her groceries added up, kept her distance and pretended to read the contents on a can of soup.

About fifteen minutes later I was in Mrs. Plaut’s dining room.

“You look a mess, Mr. Peelers,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“What happened?”

“Pest control,” I said. “Had to go into some treacherous bushes. Those Hun beetles.”

She nodded in understanding and unpacked the groceries.

“Steak, oleo, peanut butter, potatoes, and apple jelly,” she said. “Total: one dollar and ninety-four cents which means …”

I handed her a dollar and six cents change.

“You are a very odd but honest man, Mr. Peelers,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Wait.”

She disappeared into her living room, and Stillwell started squawking. When she came back, Mrs. Plaut had a large, almost full bottle of brown liquid. She handed it to me.

“Olivia’s oleander-and-thick-oil liniment,” she said. “Olivia Gracefounder was my aunt. Use it sparingly. Rub it hard.”

“Thanks,” I said and got up.

“You are welcome. Remember, as the Mister used to say, ‘whatever happens the tides will come and go unless the good Lord decides he’s had enough.’”

“I’ll remember that,” I said, heading for the door.

The bird went nuts when I walked through the living room. He said something. I don’t know what.

Going up the stairs was getting harder each time I came back to Mrs. Plaut’s. I made it to my room, took off my clothes, and examined them to see if there was anything I could salvage. There wasn’t, except for my shirt, which had a blotch of something green on it that could probably be cleaned.

In my boxer shorts, I put on my robe and with Olivia’s liniment in hand headed for the bathroom, where I showered and washed without too much pain. My shoulder was feeling a lot better, and the scratches looked worse than they felt until I applied Olivia’s liniment. I think I howled in pain. Maybe I screamed. There was a knock at the bathroom door and Gunther called out, “Toby, is that you? Are you all right?”

“It’s me. I’m all right.”

I put the cursed bottle on the back of the toilet and washed off what I could of the liniment from my body, but it still tingled in shock.

“I must talk to you,” said Gunther. “I have made a discovery.”

“I’ll be right out,” I said. “I’ll get dressed and come to your room.”

“You are sure you are …?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “If you like I’ll sing you a chorus of ‘I’ve Got Rhythm.’”

“That will not be necessary,” said Gunther on the other side of the door. “I will see you in my room.”

I put on my robe, grabbed the lethal bottle to keep it from falling into innocent hands, and went back to my room, where I put on a pair of blue slacks that could have used a little pressing and maybe even a cleaning. In the back of the closet, I found a blue shirt that I thought I had lost and got a fresh pair of socks from my drawer. After slipping into my shoes, I decided that my shoulder where I had tried Olivia’s liniment actually felt a lot better.

Dash leapt through the window and onto the table. He looked at me.

“Hungry?” I asked.

He just kept looking at me. I had two cans of tuna fish left. I opened one, spooned half of it onto a small plate, and put it on the floor. Dash went for it, and I finished off what was left, rinsed the can, and threw it in the waste-basket. Then I went to Gunther’s room.

“Come in,” he called when I knocked.

He was standing near the window, hands clasped behind his back, neat brown suit and tie, looking at me and bouncing on his heels.

“I have found your man,” he said.

“My man?”

“The leader of the Nazi cell at Caroll College,” he said.

“Who is it?”

“We will know in …” He looked at his pocket watch. “Ten minutes.”

I sat in the chair I always sat in, the one that wasn’t too small for me, and leaned back.

“What happens in ten minutes?” I asked.

“A visitor,” he said. “You have suffered more injury.”

He looked concerned.

“It’s a long story,” I said. “Well, a medium-length story.”

I told him what had happened. Gunther listened, speaking only once to say, “This Joe. He is the leader.”

I agreed and finished my tale.

“May I speak?” he asked, still standing.

I nodded.

“You should consider another profession.”

“Anita said the same thing.”

“The human body is a miracle,” he said. “Remarkable but not infinite in its ability to restore itself.”

“I know.”

“But you will do nothing different?”

“It’s what I do,” I said. “What would you do if you lost all your clients?”

Gunther thought for a moment and said, “I would live on my savings and investments and write a book on the Kurdish struggle for independence.”

“Sounds like best-seller material,” I said.

“It would be a labor of scholarship, a much needed treatise and one that would afford me great satisfaction, though my audience would be admittedly limited to scholars.”

There was a knock at the door, which opened before Gunther could speak. Mrs. Plaut stood there. I could see someone behind her.

“There’s someone here has an appointment with you,” she said to Gunther.

“Yes, yes,” said Gunther.

“Did you use Olivia’s liniment?” she said to me.

“Worked fine,” I said.

“You may keep it for future needs. I have fourteen bottles.”

“You use it?” I asked.

“Olivia had a gift for curing,” she said, “but she also had a belief that cure could not come without pain. I would prefer to suffer than let that liniment touch my body.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“You are welcome.”

Mrs. Plaut went back in the hall, and Gunther’s visitor entered. Mrs. Plaut closed the door and I found myself looking up at a familiar face.

“Miss Wright,” Gunther said. “Please have a seat.”

He gestured toward his desk chair, a chair in which I had never seen anyone but Gunther.

Jacklyn Wright looked at me without expression and sat in the chair. She was wearing a dark green dress and a light green sweater. Her hair was brushed back and her skin looked pink and clean. An all-American look.

She looked at Gunther and said something in German. Gunther answered. They went on for a little while. She started to talk faster, and Gunther was about to say something when I cut him off with, “Hold it. What’s going on?”

“Miss Wright wishes some reassurances,” Gunther said.

“Reassurances?”

“She is concerned about whether you have sufficient influence to keep her from prison if she agrees to reveal what we need to know.”

I thought about Cantwell and D’Argentero, the FBI men, and about Phil.

“Odds are good,” I said. “But no guarantees.”

“I’ll settle, if necessary,” she said, “for an opportunity to leave the city if you agree to get rid of the FBI agents who are following me. Within a day, I can be in Canada and have a new identity.”

“And start another cell,” I said.

“No. We’ve lost the war. There are only the fanatics, who still believe Hitler can come up with a miracle, and the schemers, who are looking for ways to profit from defeat. Our little cell is a pitiful group waiting for orders that are never going to come.”

“We help you and you turn over the guy you report to,” I said. “Something’s missing.”

She looked at me and then turned away.

“He’s planning to leave the city sometime late tonight,” she said. “He’s planning to leave me, all of us for the FBI. He doesn’t know that I know, but I do. He tells me he and I will get out together, that he has a plan. He’s told me one lie too many.”

“Something’s still missing,” I said.

She sighed.

“We have been lovers,” she said. “He plans to simply walk away from me, leave me for the FBI while he takes off with …”

“Someone else?” I said.

I had an idea who the someone else was—one or both of the women who had shot at me a few hours earlier.

Her silence answered my question.

“Miss Wright contacted me,” Gunther said. “I told her I would hear her offer and relay it to you, but you came here in time and so …”

“Did she call you here?” I asked.

“No,” said Gunther. “She handed me a note at Freed’s Bookstore early this morning.”

“I’d been following him,” she said. “I follow him. The FBI follows me. I am tired of this war. I am tired of this hiding and intriguing and accomplishing nothing.”

“Okay,” I said. “Give us what you’ve got. If it’s true, I’ll buy you the time to get out. If you’re setting us up, I’ll go right to the FBI. Why didn’t you just set up this deal with them in the first place?”

“I don’t trust them,” she said. “They would tell me they would make a deal, and then they would not honor it. They’ve done it before, often. It is the way they work, the way they should work.”

We were there now.

“Who are we looking for and where do I find him?”

“He is Lawrence Toddhunter, and he lives on the cliffs overlooking the reservoir over Laurel Canyon,” she said.

“Toddhunter?” I asked.

“The dean of the School of Performance at Caroll,” Gunther said.

“Yes. He recruited me when I came to apply for a job. He knew my parents were German. I could claim that he seduced me, tricked me, but that would not be true. He convinced me. I am not a fool. Now he plans to run with some information that he hopes to negotiate with if he gets caught.”

What I did now was get Toddhunter’s address and decide to go find a phone and tell the FBI I didn’t want any more of this—and if I messed up again I could find myself with some creative and colorful federal charges against me. After I told the FBI, I’d find a phone that wasn’t tapped, as was Mrs. Plaut’s, and tell Cary Grant what I had done. It wasn’t the way he wanted it, but I’d try to make him see I had no choice.

I got a phone number where I could reach Jacklyn Wright or leave a message. She got up and looked at Gunther and then at me.

“I have your word,” she said.

“Yes,” Gunther and I said together, and she walked out, almost bumping into Mrs. Plaut, who was on her way in.

“Mr. Peelers,” she said. “You have a telephone call.”

I followed her into the hall and went to the phone on the landing, watching Jacklyn Wright hurry down the stairs and through the front door.

“Peters,” I said, picking up the phone on the landing.

“You just had a visitor,” the familiar voice said.

“Did I?”

“You did,” said Joe, who I now knew was Lawrence Toddhunter. “I believe other ears may be listening to us, so I strongly suggest you use no names.”

“Go on.”

“I have a riddle for you,” he said.

“I can’t wait to hear it.”

“What is short, round, bald, nearsighted, fond of very cheap cigars, and is sitting five feet away from me? Don’t give a name. Just answer “yes” if you know the answer.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “And what is pretty, young, dark, and remarkably calm when faced with terrible danger.”

“Yes,” I said.