4

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
JUNE 26, 1942

 
Two signs forbidding personal long-distance telephone calls were tacked to the employee bulletin board of the Memphis Advocate. One was a poster published by the Office of the Coordinator of Information. It showed an Air Corps officer sitting at a desk with a telephone to his ear. He was wearing a look of pained frustration in response to a balloon coming from the telephone: “Sorry, Captain, all the lines are busy.” In black letters was the legend “Telephones are tools of war! If you have to call, make it quick!”

The second was smaller and more succinct. It was hand-lettered:

Ann Chambers ignored both. For one thing, she doubted that one two-minute telephone call from Memphis, Tennessee, to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was really going to lose more battles than were already being lost. For another, the Memphis Advocate was one of nine newspaper properties owned by Chambers Publishing Corporation. The president of Chambers Publishing was Brandon Chambers, and Brandon Chambers was Ann’s father.

She had begun thinking about making the telephone call to Iowa in the elevator in the Peabody Hotel the day her cousin Ed Bitter had told her that Dick Canidy had been sent home in disgrace from China for “refusing to engage the enemy.”

Ed obviously believed what he told her to be true. And it certainly would explain why her pen-pal letters to Canidy had gone unanswered. It was possible that he was a coward, though she didn’t feel that was likely.

In fact, the truth was that even if Dick did run away from the Japs she didn’t care. The truth was that she loved him more than she’d ever believed she could love any man. And what she wanted more than anything in the world right now was to get his head on her shoulder. Or her breast.

“This is Reverend Canidy,” the voice on the telephone said curiously.

“Reverend Canidy, this is Ann Chambers,” she said. “I’m Ed Bitter’s cousin, and, more to the point, a friend of Dick’s.”

“Oh, how nice!” he said, puzzled.

“The reason I’m calling is that I’m going—I live in Memphis—East, and I seem to have lost Dick’s address.”

“He’s home from China,” the Reverend Canidy said, “as I guess you know?”

“Yes,” Ann said.

“And he’s found work with the National Institutes of Health, as a pilot.”

The National Institutes of Health?

“I’d heard,” Ann lied. “Could you give me his address in Washington? And his phone number? I’d really like to say hello when I’m there.”

“Just a moment,” he said. “I’ve got it somewhere.”

Later, when she called the number Canidy’s father gave her, a woman answered and denied any knowledge of anyone named Canidy. When Ann called the National Institutes of Health, they had never heard of him either. When she called the Washington information operator, she said she had no listing for the address Reverend Canidy had given her on Q Street, NW.

Ann walked into the Teletype room and sat down before the Chambers News Service Teletypewriter. She typed rapidly, a service message to the Chambers News Service Washington Bureau. She asked for ALLINFO, FACT AND SPEC the Washington bureau could develop SOONEST on what was going on at the address Reverend Canidy had given her on Q Street, Northwest. She signed it CHAMBERS ADVOCATE. If they thought her father had sent the service message, so much the better. Her name was Chambers, too, and if they were inspired to drop something unimportant and get on this right away, fine.

As she’d hoped, the response was quick, but it was not quite the one she expected. Two hours after she sent the service message, she had a telephone call.

“Exactly what is your interest in that address on Q Street?” her father began without other preliminary.

“Hello, Daddy,” she said. “I’m fine, how are you?”

“What are you into?” he said. “What have you heard?”

“How did you get involved in this?” she asked.

“That address, so far as we’re concerned, doesn’t exist,” Brandon Chambers said. “Do you take my point?”

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“It’s a government installation,” he said. “We don’t know it’s there. We don’t write about it.”

“Oh,” she said.

“When you signed my name to that service message, they checked with me.”

“I didn’t sign your name to it,” she said. “My name for the time being is Chambers, too.”

She heard him sigh in exasperation, but he chose not to argue about that.

“I have to know, honey,” he said, “what you’re working on.”

“I was looking for Dick Canidy,” she said. “I got that address from his father.”

There was a long pause.

“Eddie returned from China with an unpleasant report on Mr. Canidy,” Brandon Chambers finally said.

“That he was a coward,” Ann said. “Eddie told me.”

“And Canidy’s father gave you the Q Street address?”

“And two telephone numbers,” Ann said. “I called both of them, and they said they had never heard of Canidy.”

“What’s behind your deep interest in Canidy?”

“I swore Mother to secrecy,” Ann said, “but I thought she’d tell you anyway. I’m going to marry him.”

“For Christ’s sake!” he said. “This is not a joking matter, Ann.”

“Who’s joking?”

“Now, listen to me,” he said. “Drop your inquiry right now. Right here. If you don’t, you can do us a great deal of harm. I’ve come to an agreement with certain people—”

“It’s a military secret, right?” she challenged. “And I’m a Nazi agent.”

“It is a matter of military secrecy, Ann,” her father said.

“Odd, wouldn’t you say, that a coward is involved with military secrets?” she said.

“Just drop it, Ann, okay?” he said. “I want your word.”

“Or what?”

“Or you’re fired. This moment.”

He’s absolutely serious.

“It’s that important?”

“It is.”

“All right, then,” she said.

“And I don’t want you talking to anybody—even Eddie or your girlfriend—”

“Mrs. Edwin Howell Bitter, you mean?” Ann said.

“Goddamn it, I’m serious.”

“I know,” she said. “Okay, Daddy, you’ve made your point.”

“I really hope so, Ann,” he said.

Thirty minutes later, Ann walked into the office of the Advocate’s managing editor and told him her father wanted her to come to Washington for a couple of days, and she was thinking of going Saturday afternoon after they’d gotten most of the Sunday edition to bed. She hated to ask, but if she could have a business travel priority certificate for an airplane ticket, that would get her back to work that much quicker.

“Yeah, sure, Ann,” he said. “We can work that out.”

Being in love does strange things to you. So far this morning, I have lied to an Episcopal priest, my father, and my boss. And I’m not at all ashamed of myself.

Then she called Sarah Child Bitter at the Willard Hotel in Washington and announced that she would be in Washington on Saturday and needed a place to stay.

Sarah and Ed Bitter were living in Sarah’s father’s suite in the Willard. Ed was probably going to be more than a little annoyed when she showed up, since they had been married only a few days. Having Ann around would be like having your sister on your honeymoon.

To hell with him, Ann thought. He owes me for taking care of Sarah.