12:37 a.m.
The basement is full of Lee’s boxing memorabilia. There’s a passel of publicity stills, along with framed posters for Lee’s “Big Money” bout with Jimmy Bivens. The fight was fixed. Lee “went in the tank.” The poster is dated July 16, 1937. It precedes Ben Siegel and the Boulevard-Citizens heist.
Lee will probably spend the night at City Hall. He will show up here when he damn well pleases, and right at the point that I begin to miss him. He’ll apologize for his loathsome conduct at Mike Lyman’s. He might heap praise on Dr. Hideo Ashida.
Who possesses a remote sort of courage. It’s the courage I once mistakenly ascribed to his friend Bucky. The intersection of these two men fascinates me. I keep thinking, Why now? and go to the war as the only explanation. In the meantime, I can’t sleep and remain hungry for Scotty Bennett. In the meantime, Captain William H. Parker has sent me a movie.
I’m set up to watch it. The screen is a roll-down contraption hooked to the rear basement wall. Lee bought it to view old fight films, and I’ve learned how to run the projector. I was there for the first show of Gone with the Wind. I want to see this movie much more.
I loaded the film and thought about Scotty. We left Lyman’s in the wake of Dr. Ashida’s embarrassed exit; we checked into the Rosslyn Hotel and made love. I wanted to spend the night—but Scotty said that he couldn’t. He’d borrowed his father’s car and promised to return it by midnight. My rough boy remained in the thrall of the Reverend James Considine Bennett. I resisted the urge to comment. I said, “You can go, but I’m not done with you yet.”
It angered Scotty. He brought that anger to our good-night kiss; I started wanting him all over again.
I stuck the first piece of film under the slide, hit the switch and turned off the lights. There it was—Storm Over Leningrad.
I steadied the spools and leaned into the speaker. An overture covered the titles. The fascist dissonance was stolen from Prokofiev; the heroic harmonies were stolen from Brahms. A polemical folly unfolded; the real Russians and Germans were staining the steppes workers’ red as I watched.
I was too tired to laugh. My clothes were filthy. My muscles ached from hours of grubby work in police squadrooms. My heart just plain dropped.
Claire De Haven and company cared for the plight of the world. Claire De Haven and company extolled tyrants and lived for adversarial cliché.
I recognized the Russian-front exteriors. They were the grounds of Terry Lux’s sanitarium. The PD had their summer picnics there. I’d read Captain Parker’s files. The Red Queen was the uncredited writer and director. The movie was shoddily improvised. The actors tripped over one another. The battling soldiers shot BB guns. The windbag oratory was flabbergasting. Most of the Nazis appeared to be Mexican, Jewish or Greek.
I felt sick. Captain William H. Parker sent me this. He viewed my performance at the Robeson recital and assumed my derisive laughter here. He did not stop to think that I might feel kinship with a woman this touched by the world’s horror.
Enough.
I turned off the projector and turned on the lights. Storm Over Leningrad swooped and died. I stood in front of a wall mirror and performed.
The mirror was Claire De Haven. I was myself speaking to her and myself as her in reply. I ridiculed her movie for its artlessness and praised her courage in wearing her staunch heart on her sleeve. She voiced skepticism. My prairie-girl/police-consort persona was unconvincing. I was too young and feckless to have shed blood for the Red Cause. She called me a child sophisticate and critiqued my performance at the recital as artfully realized sophistry. “Are you a police informant, Katherine? You whored for a pimp and excoriated him at trial. You live with cops and off of cops and come to me with your revulsion for them as the stated basis of your credibility. Where have you been before that? I have stood before official committees and have been pilloried for my beliefs. I do not see one iota of self-sacrifice in you.”
It was my best self-indictment as her best moment. I would meet her tomorrow, at Dr. Lesnick’s office. Her slaves would tell her that they saw me at the Anti-Axis Committee. She would be impressed that I recalled lines from Storm Over Leningrad and would not know that I had watched it the previous night. I looked in the mirror and saw myself as her. I aged ten years and became slightly dissolute and much more patrician. I lacerated myself. I outcritiqued Claire De Haven’s critique.
It was enough to take with me. I couldn’t hold my mirror pose a moment longer. I had his mother’s number memorized and wanted to talk to him. I dialed the number and barely heard it ring.
Hideo Ashida said, “Yes?”
I said, “It’s Kay Lake.”
“Tell me what you mean.”
“I’m saying that when the phone rang this late, I knew it was you.”
“Were you awake?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep.”
He said, “It’s the war. Everyone is like that.”
I said, “I saw Captain Parker yesterday afternoon. He was exhausted.”
“I saw him several hours ago. He fell asleep in a briefing.”
“I think—”
“I don’t want to talk about Captain Parker. It seems inappropriate.”
I said, “Tell me something. Give me an insight or provoke me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He said, “I’ve been assigned two bodyguards. I think you’re acquainted with them.”
“Tell me who.”
He said, “Sergeant Elmer Jackson and Officer Lee Blanchard.”
I said, “Meet me tomorrow night. Give them the slip. We’ll have a drink somewhere.”
He said, “Yes, as you wish.” The phone went dead then.
The receiver slipped out of my hand. Nobody could sleep. Some of us could think as our eyes blurred.
Captain Parker knew the movie would instill empathy. He was creating confusion and a fanatic’s fury within me. He knew I’d never back down. I was his sister in fury.