Davidian Report (8 page)

She spoke unfamiliar syllables. “Haig Armour.” Her English wasn’t proficient enough to take it other than phonetically. “Who is this?”

“One of your Berlin playmates.” Anger was coming up into his throat again. “You couldn’t forget Haig Armour. He is rich, important, a magnificent man.”

“No, I could not forget this kind! It is because I have this rich, magnificent protector that I live in a hovel with the old ones and work at nights on lower Main Street.” She thought about it. “I did not know him.”

“He knew you were here,” he pointed out. “He sent Timothy Leonard to talk to you. What did Leonard want to know?”

“Where is Davidian? What else would he want? To carry me to his rich—”

He cut in. “Did he mention me?”

“Perhaps he just mentions your name. I do not know this Steve Wintress, Stefan.” Her eyes slitted. “What do you tell this man of me?”

“Nothing.”

“Now it is you who are lying.”

“Him, nothing. Haig Armour—”

Her temper was rising and his slow smile helped it. “What do you tell him?”

“Nothing he doesn’t know. I’ve heard the name Janni Zerbec. Who hasn’t? The babe of Berlin.” His hand was above her wrist but he remembered not to touch her. “The dancer in all the best cafés.”

She spat. “It was jealousy. I was superior to the café dancers. They were old and spavined. They were afraid to have me be seen. It was for this reason I must dance on the street and in private quarters—”

He asked, “Did you know Reuben St. Clair?”

“Who is this?”

“A G.I. He was in Berlin.”

She said, “I do not remember. There were so many soldiers. German soldiers, American soldiers, English, French, Russian soldiers. I do not remember their faces or their names, only what they give to me.”

“You’ve stopped lying,” he said insolently. “What about Haig Armour?”

She glowered under her ragged dark bangs. “I have told you I do not know this Haig Armour.” Again she gave the name phonetic quality. And he didn’t know which one spoke true, she or Haig. She was peering past the window. “We have quarreled sufficiently. Now I take you home. You will behave as if I take you against your wishes.”

“Who’ll believe that?” She couldn’t meet his eyes. She hadn’t forgotten, no matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she wanted him to believe she had. He put on a scowl as she walked him out of the place. The fellow who’d taken over her job could watch them depart.

They turned west at Third Street. She said, “Here you may leave me.”

He countered, “I haven’t the faintest intention of leaving you. I am here for information.”

She flashed, “There is no information I can give you. Or your friends. Tell them that. Tell them to leave me alone. I know nothing. Nothing!”

“You know one thing, Janni. How to put me in touch with Davidian. Listen to me.” He took her arm, holding it rigid until she ceased resisting. “He is expecting me. We planned this before he left Berlin. It is essential I see him before the others do.” They walked together. “Just why are you holding out on me? Hasn’t he told you he wants to see me?”

She said savagely, “Maybe he trusts you. I know better.”

“What’s your percentage?” He flung the insult. “You think you can make a better deal?”

She was trembling with anger. “I would not touch your deals. I wish only to be a good American.” The anger subsided. “This is what he wishes also, only to be a good American.”

He ignored the appeal. “Davidian looks out for Davidian.”

“You do not know him now! He is no longer a man to be beaten, kicked—he is free! I will not turn him over to you to be trapped again in your dirty organization.”

“Listen,” he demanded. “This hasn’t anything to do with any organization. This is a private matter between Davidian and me.” He stressed it. “No one else figures in it.”

“You are working for the party.”

“I work where I get paid.” How much did he dare say? It wasn’t safe to deposit information with anyone. Not on this kind of job. He couldn’t trust her.

Her voice was a smooth, cold stone. “I do not understand this. That you can work for them, betray your own people. For money!”

“It’s a good enough reason,” he said callously. “You’re the last one to point the finger. Let’s leave my conscience out of it. And yours. All I want is for you to get word to Davidian that I’m here looking for him. That’s all. Not next week or the day after tomorrow. Now. Let him decide if he’ll see me. You can believe it or not but if I don’t get to him fast, he’s in for trouble.”

“Where you are, there is always trouble,” she stated.

He hadn’t realized it but they were at the Fifth Street incline that led to Bunker Hill. Without warning she twisted her arm from his clutch. “Stay away from me. I have enough troubles.” She began to run up the hill.

He could have followed her. But he didn’t. He’d given her enough to think about. She might not recognize it as truth but he had told her true; he had to see Davidian alone before either side moved in.

On the long trolley run back to the hotel, he had time to think about Davidian. No matter how much Janni wanted to believe that Davidian had changed, Steve knew better. He was using Janni.

The man could be yet hiding out in the battered old house where Janni lived. This Steve doubted. It would not have been safe for either of them. Wherever Davidian was, it must be a place where there was sufficient seclusion for him to work on his report. It would be a poor place, the old man’s purse strings wouldn’t pry any wider than small change. But not too isolated, Davidian wasn’t the recluse type; he’d be needing someone to smoke a cigarette with, to argue philosophy and politics and historical accidents with. He’d be needing a woman. Wherever he was, he’d make friends. Not caring that friends could be dangerous. For Davidian, danger was the norm.

There was some pattern of communication worked out between the two. They wouldn’t risk letters. They would be wary of the telephone. Their good Americanization program would not as yet have erased the deep-rooted suspicion carried with them from Europe. They could meet accidentally, two strangers on a park bench, exchanging the hour; two strangers passing on the street. The solution was so obvious—the all-night movie. Where Janni could be found every night; where Davidian was only another shabby man buying a seat to rest his skinny bones. He could have been inside the grimy theater tonight while she led Steve away by his nose. He cursed her just above his breath. Goddamn little slut.

If he’d been in a position to offer her a wad of dollars, she’d have sold him a ticket and personally ushered him to a seat beside the man he sought. Haig had the wad; all he needed was to offer her enough to overcome her repugnance at selling out to the police. Once he caught on to that, events would move fast enough Haig’s way. The worst of it was that Steve didn’t dare ask for extraordinary funds from the organization; he had to work cheap. While time closed in inexorably.

The trolley trundled past the hotel and Steve jabbed the bell. He swung off at the next stop, annoyed at overriding his destination; it meant he was off key and he couldn’t afford that. It hadn’t to do with the physical actuality of Janni; he was through with that. He could touch her wrist, her arm, without his blood remembering.

He walked back the two blocks. The lobby smoldered in its customary shadow, the nonexistent clerk posed behind the desk, the Philippine boy rode him silently to the fourth floor. He opened the door with his key, saw Reuben leaning against the bath door and then saw the upheaval of the room.

“What the hell?”

“Don’t jump me. I just got in.”

There’d been so little to disturb, he and Rube traveled light. But that little was upside down on the dirty rug. They hadn’t taken his gun; it was a dull high light on the rug. Rube couldn’t help spotting it but he didn’t say a word.

“The lousy bastards.” It wasn’t his side, they would have searched the place unobtrusively twelve hours ago. Leaving no traces. Nor would the F.B.I. leave a mess. Not unless they chose to. This was Haig Armour’s idea, more psychological unnerving. Steve tossed the gun into his valise. “Sorry.” He began to pick up the rest of the stuff.

“You’re up to your neck in something, aren’t you?”

Steve shook his head. “Just a job. Run of the mill.”

“It’s tied up with Haig Armour.”

“Believe me, kid, I never saw him before last night. Purely accidental.”

“He said you’d gone to meet a girl.”

“Wise guy.” Stripped, he lay on the bed, finishing his nightcap cigarette.

“She got more on the ball than Feather?”

“Wouldn’t take much for that.”

“Feather’s a funny girl. She acts scared.” Rube cut the lamp but the neon glow from the cocktail bar across the street gave low-key visibility. He’d forgotten to pull the lank curtains across the windows. It was just as well, maybe the sun would wake them. If there was sun in the morning.

“Scared of men. Except for Uncle Haig. The protective type.” Steve wondered out loud, “What did you do after I left?”

“We danced. But she had to get home early. She had a lesson or something in the morning, she said.”

“Who took her home?”

“Well, I did. In Haig’s car.”

“And Haig’s chauffeur.” Steve added, “Who subsequently delivered you here.”

“Right. He doesn’t act much like a chauffeur.” Rube creaked to an elbow. “Haig’s kind of a curious guy.”

“About what?”

“You and me. Shacking up here. He kept trying to make out we’d known each other in Berlin. And this girl you two had been talking about.”

Steve asked it. “You didn’t run into this Janni Zerbec over there?”

“If I did, she didn’t tell me her right name. The ones I met were all named Greta.”

Steve wasn’t going to be a curious guy. Any more than Rube was, not one word about the gun. He’d just go on wondering where Reuben fit or if he fit. At least he had the kid at hand, or vice versa as the case might be.

The room wasn’t much brighter when he woke than when he’d slept. Another fog-bound morning. Winter in California. When he emerged from the shower, Reuben was stirring. “What time?”

Steve pushed his last clean shirt into his belt. “Almost eleven. I’ve got some business to attend to. Think you can keep out of trouble?”

Rube grinned. “I kind of thought I’d go down to the broadcasting studios today. Maybe I’ll win us a washing machine.”

Steve knotted his tie. “If you don’t we better find us a laundry.” He slipped into his jacket, took another look at the sky and grabbed his hat and coat. “See you later.” He rode downstairs, picked up the morning papers at the corner newsstand, and made for the nearest lunch room. While he waited for his ham and eggs, he drank coffee and searched for mention of Albion. There wasn’t any. Albie had moved out of the news as unassumingly as out of existence. No one was interested in him now but the F.B.I.

Steve left the papers with his tip and continued up the boulevard. The sun was beginning to clear away the overcast, pushing small tatters of blue through the dirty gray. He didn’t need his topcoat after all. The giant green tin Christmas trees were picking up a glint, the shiny silver ornaments swinging above were turning to silver.

He was on Mr. Oriole’s porch exactly at noon, pushing the bell while the hands on his watch met at the top of the dial. Mr. Oriole didn’t open the door; it might have been his wife, might have been his mother. She was heavy-hipped with worn hands and shoulders. Her tongue said brokenly, “Come in.” She pointed to the parlor. “In here.”

No one was in the parlor. Steve didn’t sit down. He looked out the side window at a straggle of pale little flowers against the neighboring fence.

Mr. Oriole had slept in the same clothes. He came in complaining feebly, “You’re right on time.” A thin sheaf of papers drooped from his pudgy fingers.

“I planned it that way.” Steve held out his hand. “You have the information?”

“I have done the best I could. You did not give me much time.”

“I don’t have much time.” Steve kept the hand extended. The sharp bell was a rasp across nerve ends. No wonder the woman had looked tired with that racket interrupting her days and nights.

Oriole said nervously, “That will be Mr. Schmidt.”

“A conference.” It wasn’t unexpected.

Schmidt said only, “Good morning,” yet somehow in the two words he conveyed distaste for Oriole’s uncouth appearance and his displeasure that Steve was here first.

Steve answered the good morning briefly and turned on Oriole. “I told you I have no time to waste. Let’s see what you’ve turned up.” He forestalled Oriole’s move to pass the papers to Schmidt by stepping up and taking them. He returned to the window, teetered on the edge of a straight-backed chair, his shoulder to the other men. He covered the sparse accounts rapidly; reread, pausing where there might be a clue, then slapped the sheaf on the edge of the fern table. The fronds trembled. Schmidt had to cross the room to retrieve the document.

“So this is all I get.” Steve didn’t hide disgust. “Davidian came to L.A. maybe seven or eight months ago and checked in at a Bunker Hill apartment house, boarding with a girl named Janni Zerbec and an old couple who might be her kin. By the time we got on to this, Davidian was gone. Vanished. Being thorough, Albion called at the apartment, a broken-down, one-room affair. He didn’t see how they could take in a boarder,” Steve grimaced. “Albion must have forgotten his Berlin experience. He found out nothing from the old couple, they don’t speak English, only some obscure Slav dialect. The girl spoke English but persisted in knowing nothing. She admitted Davidian had moved out, she had no idea where. Why did he move? Perhaps because he found a better place, perhaps because he no longer had the money to pay board to them. The girl was in no way cooperative in her responses. She insisted Davidian had been gone from there for six months.”

Schmidt had retired to the couch. He was following the report by eyeglass as well as by ear. Steve got to his feet and began to pace the mottled carpet as he had yesterday. To focus attention on himself.

“Albion alerted certain trusted workers to check the obvious places. The missions were investigated, the Skid Row charity joints, the county jail. Davidian wouldn’t be the first bum to take advantage of bed and board on the town. The investigators were hampered by having no firsthand knowledge of Davidian, no photograph, merely Albion’s memory of a man he met maybe once or twice five years ago. The official description’s vague enough, about forty years old, sallow complexion, dark eyes and hair, small hands and feet, height five feet four or five. It fits dozens. And easy enough to change that description in six months with good American food and California sun.” He broke off sharply. “I wasn’t sent here to walk the streets looking for a familiar face under a new disguise. I’m here to pick up the Davidian report. That’s my job. To get the Davidian report.”