Davidian Report (16 page)

She threatened, “Get out of here.”

“Didn’t Rube tell you I was coming?”

“Rube?” She pushed at her scalloped hair. And then she came suddenly awake. “What time is it?”

“It’s past noon.” Steve helped himself to a chair. “Get dressed. He was to tell you I was on the way to pick you up. I’m to deliver you to him.”

She yanked open the door. “You will wait outside while I dress.”

“I’ll wait right here. It’ll give us a chance to talk things over.”

“There is nothing for us to talk over.”

He settled himself, lit a cigarette. “Get dressed. You’re keeping Rube waiting.”

She glared but she banged shut the door. Again the walls shivered. She ignored him, walking to the stained sink beside the stove, splashing soap and water. He kept quiet until she was toweling herself.

“Have you seen Davidian yet?”

She walked back to the wardrobe, swept aside the limp cretonne curtain and eyed her few dresses.

“You’re going to see him today. This is the day you give him his dough.”

After a brief moment she removed the hate of her eyes and carried her clothes over to her bed. She dumped them there, turned her back on Steve, and began to dress.

He grinned, “I know plenty, sweetheart.”

She said viciously, “Don’t call me sweetheart.”

“A colloquialism which slipped out. Pardon, Fräulein Zerbec. Where do you pay off?”

She perched on the edge of her cot to slide the sheer nylons over her exquisitely long legs. He’d given her her first nylons. The other kids had been happy with chocolate. She’d been as hungry as the others but she’d wanted nylons and a red lipstick.

“If you know so much, find out.” She dropped the kimono, slipped the narrow black dress over her head.

“I’ll find out if I have to stick to your tail every minute of this day and night.” He made the words count. “I don’t want to go that far.”

She smoothed the dress over her breasts, down her small rounded hips. “You are a louse,” she said serenely, but her eyes were jagged with anger.

“You’ve picked up a few colloquialisms yourself, sweetheart.”

She began to brush her hair with fierce strokes.

“Haven’t you learned by now that Davidian wants to see me? That I’m the only one who can peddle his report?”

Carefully she put down the brush. “Why do you go on with it?” She spoke quietly. “Do you honestly believe you can double-cross the party—and live?”

He didn’t figure in her fears; it was Davidian alone. He said curtly, “Think it over. I’m meeting you and Rube for dinner.”

“And your fancy blond?” Her moment of weakness was gone. She stood at the smeared mirror, coloring her mouth. “La di dah!”

“Maybe this will help you decide. The F.B.I. picked me up last night for a little talk. They’ve warned me if anything happens to Davidian, I’m the fall guy.” He got to his feet. “Nothing’s going to happen to Davidian while I’m in town.”

She caught up her red coat, her cheap black purse. “You are leaving soon?”

“As soon as I’ve talked with him.”

They shouldn’t have looked into each other’s eyes. Too long a moment. She said unsteadily, “We must not keep Reuben waiting longer.”

There were no more words until they were just another man and woman in just another car trundling along the busy streets of the city. He had to reach back into memory for the words that raised her question.

“Where do you go?”

When the job was done? “Wherever I’m sent.”

“Back to Berlin?”

“Why not? A job’s a job.”

“You have not changed.” She spoke not with regret but stating a fact.

“Did you expect it?”

“No.” There was no more than a faint shading of doubt. “You made your choice. And you are stubborn.”

“Let’s say logical. Sounds better.”

“However you say it, you would not admit to being wrong.”

His laugh jeered. “You say I’m wrong.”

“Before I came to your country, I accepted that you could be right. That you were right when you believed you had picked the side of ultimate victory.” She shook her head. “Now I know how wrong you are. And I do not understand how you can believe otherwise.”

He said, “I don’t get you, Janni. There’s only one reason you wanted to come to the U. S. and that was to pick up some of those gold and silver chunks that pave the streets. And those refrigerators and swimming pools and big cars and fancy clothes and all the rest of it. What have you got? A slum almost as bad as you were raised in. Bargain-basement duds. Ten-cent perfume. A job that doesn’t pay you enough to eat right, a job that only the hopeless would touch. That’s your land of promise. Empty promise. You’d have done better to stay in Berlin.”

“No,” she said and she was so very sure of herself. “That is where I know you to be wrong. Not even if I could have those gold and silver things in Berlin would it be better there. What you hold in your hand does not matter. There is something more important. To be free.”

“Free!” He snorted. “Free to live like dirt. That’s good?”

“It is good, Stefan, to be free to live as I will. To go to a dance or to a church or to a movie, or to stay home; to read whatever I wish to read, to speak in any way I wish to speak, to think as I wish to think. Day or night to do what I choose, without fear.” She was like a torrent. “No papers! It was many weeks before I lost my fear when walking home from work at night, very late, I would spy a policeman. I would begin to search for my papers.” She illustrated, scrabbling into her purse, and then she smiled, happy as a child. “Until I learned to remember—no papers!”

He grimaced, “And you think it’s right for the rich bitches to have Beverly Hills and you Skid Row?”

“I am free to move to Beverly Hills.”

He denied it with a laugh. “There’s a little capitalistic device known as the economic system. Boiled down it says that the guys at the top aren’t going to let the guys at the bottom come up. They’re free to keep you down below. And you’re free to stay there.”

“You know better.” She wasn’t angered. She was almost patient with him, she spelled it out primer-clear. “I am free to go to school. And the school is free. It is called adult education. When I am a stenographer I will not remain on Main Street. When I am a good stenographer I will move to Beverly Hills. If I want to move to Beverly Hills. If I do not, I will not have to move there.” She studied him somberly. “You cannot understand, Stefan, because you were born to freedom. You do not know what it means always to be a serf, always to live in fear of the masters. I was born to the Nazis. When they were gone, there were new masters. There was no change, only a different name. It was worse than before possibly, for they were alien masters; they did not even speak the language of their serfs. You were born with freedom from fear. This I never knew for myself until I came to your so big and beautiful land. I had been told but I did not know how to believe it until I myself knew it to be true.” Her lips tightened. “And I do not understand you and those like you who would destroy this freedom. For what? For your own ugly reasons.”

“You wouldn’t be blabbing about freedom if the cops were chasing you. If the F.B.I. was on your tail.”

“The criminal must always be afraid, yes. And the traitor.” The word curled from her tongue. “In my country it is not only the evil men who live in fear, it is everyone, the good and the honest and the innocent. Everyone who is not corrupted by the master race. Whatever name these masters call themselves.”

The car was moving along Hollywood Boulevard and Reuben would be taking her away from him. She wasn’t the girl Steve had known in the Berlin gutters. She was Janni but she was someone new.

She stated, “It is for this reason I will not deliver Davidian to you. I will not risk his freedom.”

Steve didn’t say anything. He left-turned and drove into the lot. In her stilt heels she came to his shoulder. Berlin street kids who were raised out of wartime garbage didn’t rise up tall and serene as did California youngsters.

He steered her into the lobby. From the nearest banquette a shined-up Reuben jumped to greet them. “I was about to give you up.” He beamed at Janni. “Hello.”

“It is my fault. I oversleep. I apologize to you.” She was soft now, a woman with woman tricks, not an adversary.

“Don’t you apologize,” he told her. “I was just afraid this guy had decided to keep you for himself.”

“That is not possible.”

You could take it any way you wanted; you could skip it. “I’ve got another date,” Steve said. With a dead guy. “There’s a little place on Cahuenga. The Prague. Meet you there about seven.”

“Okay.” Any dump was okay with Reuben. As long as he had Janni. He was already skipping her out of the lobby. If Janni’s eyes had sharpened at the meeting place named, Steve couldn’t tell. It could have been a trick of the light.

He reclaimed the car and drove out Santa Monica Boulevard, shoddy save for its Beverly Hills beauty spot, to the city which named the highway. The house of dead men was the usual mansion, this one something out of Colonial Old Spain. The surrounding homes of the living shrank humbly away from its elegance. For the living, crusts; for the dead who couldn’t taste it, icing cake. Steve walked up a gracious flower-bordered walk and into the marble foyer. He removed his hat on entering; it was that kind of atmosphere.

The office attendant was a corseted matron in black satin. Her blue-white hair was waved with wig precision, the rouge on her pink powdered face was too bright. The corpse wouldn’t be painted any fancier.

Her unction didn’t hide the coarseness of her voice. “May I be of assistance?”

“I’m looking for Frederick Grasse’s family.”

She tiptilted a watch brooch. “The funeral won’t be for more than two hours, Mr.—”

“I know.” He bottled his impatience. “It is the family I’m looking for. You have the address?”

The fishy eye she protruded at him turned him into a shyster. She had a good reason to be wary, this elegant dump wouldn’t care for the police background of Albion’s death.

He forced a sad, sweet smile. “I am an old friend of Frederick’s. I just arrived in town from New York and learned—” He let his hands spread his regret like treacle. “I hoped I might be of some comfort to his mother. Fred and I were boys—” He kept slathering it on because she liked it that way. He even pulled out a handkerchief and honked his nose.

The dame was still dubious. “It isn’t usual, Mr.—”

He side-stepped the name again. “Years ago—” A word or two was all needed, she supplied the remainder out of the echoes of experience. And it finally worked. She retreated into her small office while he waited in the doorway, snuffling into the handkerchief. She consulted a card file.

“Mrs. Grasse lives on Seventeenth Street.” She recited the house number.

He repeated it as if it were a dirge. “I can’t thank you enough.” He recalled he was a stranger. “Is it far?”

She figured. “About twelve blocks.” She tapped the card.

“I have been loaned a car.”

That cheered her. He wasn’t just a bum, he could borrow a car. “Just drive out Wilshire or Santa Monica. The house is south of Wilshire.” Across the tracks, her nose inclined. Not too far across for this outfit to grab the business.

He restated the thanks and moved fast. Before her dubiety reheightened and she thought of calling the mortuary brass, or staking him out for a cop. There should have been a cop around. But they wouldn’t expect any of Grasse’s friends to show up this far ahead of the funeral.

On wheels it wasn’t far to Seventeenth Street. The Grasse bungalow was yellow frame, midway in the block, indistinguishable from the other bungalows in the neighborhood. It wasn’t shiny and it wasn’t art but it was tidy. There were the usual red flowers clustering about the steps and against the house. Early-blooming poinsettias were tall against the windows.

Steve parked in the nearest space, up the street. The Grasses had other callers. Or the clan had gathered. He knew nothing of Albion’s family, only that there was a mother. Albion was forever speaking of his old mother, with no apparent reason he would bring her into a zone of conversation, and, after a sentimental moment, permit her to leave. Conscience? Or was it only by holding fast to her hand that Albie had the courage to stand up to a hostile world?

Steve walked back to the house, up the walk and up the shallow steps to the door. So many walks and steps and doors in so many worlds. Behind the doors a home. For him never a home. A room in a flea-bag, a final resting place in a trash can in some alley. Alleys were the same all over the world, as were the little houses. He pushed the bell and heard the answering chimes.

The woman who appeared was tall and sparse, her black dress serviceable, not new for the funeral. She had a thin, sharp face, tearless behind her gold-rimmed eyeglasses, her hair was beginning to gray. She waited for Steve to speak.

“Mrs. Grasse?”

“I am Miss Grasse.” She didn’t ask him in. She held the door almost with defiance, certainly with rejection. This wasn’t the usual mourning house open to all who came bearing the drooping leaves of sympathy.

He felt impelled to explain himself. Not to force entrance, but in exoneration. “My name is Steve Wintress. Your brother and I were friends.”

Nothing softened in the lean woman. If anything she became more rigid.

He tried harder. “In Berlin. I hadn’t seen him in five years. I was looking forward to it. When I arrived, I learned he was gone.”

She didn’t welcome him, but she said, “Come in.” Out of curiosity concerning a part of her brother’s past?

The hallway was small and sunny with a yellow plaid wallpaper. It was uncluttered; there was an unframed modern mirror, a three-legged mahogany table beneath it. On the table, in the exact center of a square of white linen, a silver vase with green branches was placed.

She led into the living room at the right, another small room and on any other day a pleasant one. The furniture was old but the flowered covers were clean, the wood polished, the mantelpiece unadorned. There were minor etchings on the walls, one of Washington Square with the Arch a slant at the righthand corner, one of the fantasy skyline of Manhattan, one of a river and a young apple tree. Frederick’s nostalgia for a more serene past?