Harvey gave me his private phone number and left. I ducked into the bathroom to tap a kidney and change into my new duds. The pants were two inches too short, I’d have to wear brown socks. The shirt fit well enough, the cap was the problem. I tried wearing it at a rakish angle like Captain Candybar but it fell off. Time for a haircut.
I put on the pair of glasses and looked in the mirror. Not bad. I was a horn-rimmed intellectual with a sexy Italian name. Not a woman born could resist me. I put my wool topcoat in a drawstring laundry bag and carried it out the door.
Bill Harvey had a maintenance truck waiting for me at the service bay of the Mayflower. I stood on the dock, shot the shit with the driver and looked around. No Commie spies slunk around no corners.
The driver took me north and east a couple miles to Miss Julia’s address on Seaton Place NE. The rainstorm had moved on, the night was calm. We weren’t tailed.
I had him circle the block when we reached her apartment building just in case. Nobody followed. We parked in the alley behind her building. The only sign of life was a stooped ragpicker in a crumpled hat digging through garbage cans. I gave him a brief looksee but decided that no self-respecting federal agent would stoop that low.
I told the driver I would lock pick my way in the back door of the building.
“No need,” he said, handing me an all-purpose skeleton key. Former FBI agent Bill Harvey had tended to operational detail.
I climbed the stairs to Julia’s second floor apartment, apartment G. I knocked, nobody answered.
I smelled a rank odor from inside. The skeleton key didn’t work on her door lock so I had to pick it, my hands shaking, fearing the worst.
I rushed inside to find that the smell was just leftover liver and onions, the skillet still warm.
I tossed the joint. Hey, it’s what I do. Unfortunately Miss Julia returned with the evening paper not a minute later and caught me red-handed. She didn’t laugh at my joke.
“I told you this apartment wasn’t secure.”
Julia picked up the phone. “I’m calling the cops.”
“Bad idea.”
“You broke into my apartment!”
“You ruined my career!”
“Hal, I’m a reporter, I ask questions!”
She dialed the phone. Say something, genius.
“I’ve decided Bill Harvey’s wrong about you. You’re not a Communist agent.”
“A what?”
“You heard me.”
“Why would he think such a stupid thing?” she fumed. “And what made you decide I’m not?”
“A hardcore Commie’s not going to have a framed copy of Norman Rockwell’s Fourth of July mounted over her commode.”
“Maybe I put it up it to throw you off.”
“Then you’d have hung it in the living room where everyone can see it.”
Julia gave me a sour look but she set down the phone. Whew. Came an insistent tapping at the door.
“Julie, you are okay?”
Julia opened the door to a small spry old woman who was clutching a kitchen knife.
“Sorry if we got a little loud, ma’am.”
The old lady ignored me. “You are okay here with this person?”
“Yes, Mrs. Rogash, I’m fine, thank you for your concern.”
Mrs. Rogash shot me a hooded look and shuffled back across the hall. “She looks out for me,” said Julia.
“I can see that. Now, since you’ve consigned me to the salt mines for the rest of my miserable life, the least you can do is offer me a drink.”
“All I have is applejack.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s what we drink in southern Virginia,” she said with a droll look at my uniform. “Tony.”
We sat on her saggy red corduroy couch and sipped moonshine so strong it made my eyes water.
“There are only two people I can think of who know about the Irish hoodlums and have a burning desire to see me dead. I figured one of them for croaked and I’m guessing the other would prefer to lay low. However I have learned from past experience that I am, occasionally, incorrect.”
“You’re funnier than you know.”
I smiled and nodded. “My first suspect is Commander Frederick Seifert, formerly of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.”
The man I had used as a hostage to rob the bank. It remains the worst thing I have ever done and he was entitled to exact his revenge in any way he chose short of murder.
“I’m familiar with Commander Seifert.”
“Is he your source?”
“You tell me,” said Julia, fighting back a yawn.
“I don’t think so. The feebs let him retire shortly after…you know.”
“After you robbed his bank.”
“Yes. But Seifert’s the old fashioned type. I don’t see him trying to settle a score with a male rival by squealing to a girl reporter.”
Julia looked at her wristwatch. “I’m late for an appointment.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Who makes an appointment for ten p.m.?
“Then I’ll make this brief. My second suspect, the one I assumed was dead, is Leonid Vitinov.” No reply from Miss Julia.
“Stupid to write him off now that I think of it. My Control Officer in Berlin released Leonid to the NKVD after we exposed him as a Soviet double, thinking Beria would purge him. But Leonid was a fluent English-speaker with first-hand knowledge of American intelligence. Why croak the guy?”
“And this Leonid hates you because you exposed him?”
“Yes. And beat the crap out of him.” Pause. “And stole his wife.” Pause. “Who I later killed.”
Julia put her hand to her mouth in shock.
“It was a terrible accident,” I said, “but you can see how Leonid might not be too open-minded on that score.”
“Hal, all I know is I was contacted by a man from the Committee for Free and Fair Elections.”
“Uh huh. And the man who contacted you was short, suave and smoked expensive Turkish cigarettes.”
Julia nodded, reluctantly.
“I suppose Leonid gave you some Federal Reserve Police contacts to corroborate his story.”
“Yes, but they refused to be interviewed.”
“You accused me of terrible crimes in front of the national press based on nothing more than allegations from a man unknown to you?”
“All you had to do was deny it! And if this Leonid was a Soviet agent stationed in Berlin how in the world did he know details of an FBI sting operation in Cleveland?”
“That’s a long story,” I said. “And you’re late for an appointment.”
The corduroy couch made a rude noise as Julia shifted her weight. She made no move to go.
“You’re meeting Leonid, aren’t you?” No answer. “What name’s he using?”
“Terry. Terry Andrews.”
“And he looked like a Terry to you?”
Julia glared at me. I needed her to make this meet. I should stop being a smartass maybe.
“Think of the story you can write.”
“Sure. How I Was Duped by a Soviet Spy.”
“Leonid said he had another scoop that wouldn’t wait, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s his payday. The next story will be nailed down, with photos and affidavits. Something big, something fatal to the Dewey campaign. They’ll want the Star to run it the day before the Presidential election, figuring the wire services will pick it up. By the time it’s exposed as a hoax it’ll be too late.”
Julia looked at her watch, hesitated.
“And your story will be How I Helped Capture a Soviet Spy.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“To let Leonid make his pitch to you, then nab him when you part company.”
“And you can do that without getting me shot?”
“I’ll try my damndest, Julia, but I can’t guarantee it.”
“All right, let’s go.”
My kinda gal. But a thought occurred. “We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“This is a big meet. Leonid will be shadowed by Soviet agents. Which will make it next to impossible to bag him.”
“If I don’t show he’ll call and arrange something else,” said Julia.
“Uh uh. You’ve ticked off the FBI, he’ll figure your phone’s tapped. Leonid can’t risk contacting you and we have no way of contacting him. Do we?”
“No, but he might leave a message at the Star.”
“And who’s to say this Leonid won’t just give up when I don’t show?”
I shook my head. “This is his last shot. Oh, he’s got a back up reporter if you don’t come through, but you passed his first test with flying colors. I’m guessing he’ll give you tonight before he goes to Plan B.”
I got off the couch and paced across the narrow apartment, turned around and paced back. Julia hadn’t settled in here yet. The landscapes on the living room wall were yellowed leftovers from a previous tenant.
“Okay, the first rule of missed connections is to return to the initial point of contact. Where was it?”
Julia described Bonnie’s, a homey diner in Georgetown with curtains on the windows. I pictured Leonid in the Café Gestern in Berlin where we first met. At a corner table, away from the window, facing the door.
“If there’s no message at the Star,” said Julia, “we’ll go to Bonnie’s Diner.”
“Good.”
“And what about his Soviet agents?”
“Lenny is not an agent in good standing. Plus he’s an asshole.”
“Meaning his back up boys will ditch him when I don’t show for my ten o’clock.”
Julia grinned at my wide-eyed surprise. “I’m a quick study.”
She was that. Now all I had to do was figure a way to subdue a veteran agent on full alert. My .44 would be worthless, Vitinov would know I couldn’t risk shooting him. Once he saw me he would know his mission had been blown and his life was over. Lavrenty Beria wouldn’t forgive him twice.
My plan was for Julia to wait at Bonnie’s Diner and hope Leonid showed. I would find an observation post and wait till the meet was over to make my play.
But what if Leonid sneaked out the back door? What if he…
“Yoo hoo, Hal, over here,” said Julia, waving a hand in front of my face. “This is simple. Terry thinks I’m a bimbo infatuated with his oily charm. I know how to deal with him.”
“I’m listening.”
“There’s a tavern on the corner. I’ll bat my eyes at him and say I don’t want coffee and lemon pie, I need a drink. You jump him when we walk over.”
“That’s very gutsy, thank you. Now all we need is a reason why you stood him up,” I said. “Something trashy since he thinks you’re a bimbo.”
“Sure. Why not give me a shiner and I’ll say I had a drunken fight with my sister.”
“Right eye or left?”
Julia put her hands on her hips. “I can’t figure you, Schroeder. I can’t decide if you’re a real life intelligence agent or just a half-assed joker.”
I adjusted my horn-rim glasses and said something I had read in the back stacks of the Cleveland Public Library and had always wanted to repeat even if I wasn’t quite sure what it meant.
“That, my dear Miss Julia, is what we intellectuals call a ‘distinction without a difference.’”
I took a certain perverse pleasure in watching Julia struggle to bite back a giggle.